Clearly, parkrun believe it is necessary to limit attendance, even if you don’t.
I am making an assumption here, but it's for logistical reasons more than covid. An event that usually has capacity for 150 runners suddenly having 500 is a risk to health and safety for the runners because of congestion as much as covid. Then there's parking/transport, numbers of volunteers, disruption to other park users and on.
I am making an assumption here, but it’s for logistical reasons more than covid. An event that usually has capacity for 150 runners suddenly having 500 is a risk to health and safety for the runners because of congestion as much as covid.
Correct. My event gets 400 on a good day, if the 3 other local events were not ruining and we got 800 then Covid is the least of our worries. We simply couldn’t handle that volume on our course. Hence the vast majority need to start at the same time.
poly Free Member
I agree with you on the web registration (I’ve never done a parkrun but thought most people had a barcode they swipe at the start / finish)
It's only scanned at the finish
Nor would it be ridiculous to stagger starts if they don’t already.
Staggered starts would potentially extend the amount of time volunteers have to give up of a Saturday morning. Also you'd need to know what wave they started in to work out their time. None of which is impossible but it's all an additional overhead.
Sure it’s for logistical reasons. So what? Why does that mean they shouldn’t address this problem?
If parkrun was prepared to limit attendance, it could put on hundreds of runs every weekend.
In the past year, other organisers have managed to put on dozens of running events with a range of formats. I’ve run in a few of them myself. Parkrun bang on and on about how important they are to the physical and mental health of the nation. What contribution has parkrun made to the physical and mental health of the nation over the past year?
What contribution has parkrun made to the physical and mental health of the nation over the past year?
A similar amount to other mass participation events I would expect
What contribution has parkrun made to the physical and mental health of the nation over the past year?
I've seen some bizarre stuff on here over the years.....
If parkrun was prepared to limit attendance
Kind of removes the 'free for all' ethos. It's not about organised racing, it's for the lesser experienced runners who might not make a decision till Friday night or Saturday morning. There are loads of clubs organising runs for regular runners.
As for what it's done for mental health of people over lockdown, I've been encouraged to submit virtual times over the course of lockdown, I've been kept well informed of what they are planning and when they will make decisions. Personally I've kept up regular runs, maybe everyone hasn't, but that's on them, not parkrun.
Perhaps you have an axe to grind with them, perhaps it's not perfect, but as a largely volunteer led organisation I think it's great. There's very few things I'd bother to defend on the internet as I shy away from pointless arguments, but this is something I think shouldn't be criticised.
Also, @lunge thanks for all you do and manage to fit into your own training schedule, what a great thing to do.
Who pissed on the captains chips?
Who pissed on the captains chips?
Park run clearly
That’s a lot of piss
Ive done a rough calculation based on 6.3 million park runners, I reckon his chips have been deluged by approximately 8.8 million litres* of piss. No wonder he’s upset.
*obviously not in the last year
I think parkrun is great, mostly due to the volunteers but the central leadership obviously did a lot of great things in setting it up.
However the increasingly cult-like behaviour and their incompetence over the reopening (have you all forgotten last October’s debacle too?) is just hopelessly stupid and stubborn of them. I find it very distasteful how they have tried to bully and landowners and impose their demands on everyone else with no willingness to compromise. It’s ugly behaviour.
Again, their "demands" have already been signed off by the government and relevant national bodies. You obviously have an axe to grind but are going to have to come up with something better.
And yet there's a sportive with 1374 riders going past my front door tomorrow
On private land of multiple land owners in crowded public areas ? All across the country
Or on public open roads in a single area of the country?
Likely a single council and even more likely a single government area
Ergo completely irrelevant to anything......
Postive note.
I was run director at our local Junior parkrun today and it was bloody lovely.
Smiling kids running around a park, some super-encouraging volunteers and even the rain stayed away. Lovely way to spend a Sunday.
