Parkrun UK deleted race times / course records

So imagine you had a transgender colleague doing the challenge and this colleague got top woman for 1 week

Would you be printing t shirts and leaflets and haranguing management to get this 'fixed' or would you not give it too much thought because winners and losers isn't the purpose of the challenge?

the point is that you are taking the spot from a woman. Women have been fighting (and still are) for equality since forever. Now we are expected to just accept males taking away what we have fought for.

There was a time when women could not participate in running events, now that we have won that right, now a few top women spots are going to men. And we are now told (by men) to accept it.

Looking at this example, yes it is largely trivial, but imagine being that woman in work who has taken it seriously, have been building up your steps, finally get a great week in of steps and have been focusing on being the top woman at work - even for just one week, only to be pipped to the top spot by a guy who self identifies as a woman. That will sting a lot.

Just because you self identify as a woman/female does not make you a woman/female.
By allowing men to identify as female you are taking away the hard fought rights of women.

I know. I'm sick of hearing excuses from men about this. Why is it women are supposed to be all non-competitive to suit men? Everyone knows that its human nature to compete, no matter what level you are at. Otherwise, you wouldn't get people sprinting for the finish line to get in front of someone else or comparing themselves to other runners who used to beat them.

And then you get these men actually telling us that women aren't interested in competing at park run and we don't complain about it, ignoring all of the many complaints that women have posted on female dominated forums (where we don't tend to get deleted by administrators desperate to keep their male readership on board). And women are supposed to refuse to race/speak out/whatever to stop men having the chance of finishing first man and first woman.

The point is for the last time

Park run is not a race

Park run is a community run

They have not taken away your chance to be first, there was never really a prize for first place anyway. Its called fastest finisher for a reason. In proper competitive racing events we are all behind the seperating of trans athletes.

But this is not the olympics,

you havent paid any money

its run by volunteers

if you dont like it f**k off and run alone

its literally just people getting together to run round a park and encourage others to join in

if it's a run and not a race, and just a community run then be consistent and remove all timings and placings.
Watch how participant numbers would fall off a cliff. They may not call it a race but for the majority of participants it is.

Parkrun have made this move as they either do not want deal with the trans issue or side with trans issues over that of women's rights. That's it.

How are they supposed to deal with the trans issue? My parkrun has over 600 people every week flying through anywhere between 14 and 30 mins we have a triple funnel

How are you supposed to pick out the women with penises?

All the volunteers are mostly aging or injured runners who dont have a clue and even if they did, people fly by too often.

They give you a time because some people track their times, thats lovely and great for them. Lots of people want to go faster, but they have always been clear about the main goal which is offering an active event for mostly non active people who would never run.

If people stop bothering about the 3 trans athletes who hold course records over the 2300 park runs this might never of happened

Actually the French have a good solution for this, as they require a medical certificate to run. Parkrun UK could presumably do the same and then we could get the doctor to certify our bits too.

Or not bother as to be honest, even the distances are not marked out every week so time is practically irrelevant anyway and nobody cares that someone who was once a guy once finished ahead of someone in a unaccurately measured course in a time that wont count towards anything

One way to deal with it is to state they will remove any records that have been highlighted and proven to be held by biological males.

No one expects the volunteers to police this. They can't and should not be expected to. It is impossible to do so.

As to the 3 trans athletes that have taken records. What number of women's records should be allowed to be taken by men before you feel it's in issue, 100, 1000, all of them, or having a man take the record off a woman just doesn't matter to you.

You are correct in that people do track their times but on the whole they also track it against others. Even if you come last you will be tracking it to try and have a better placing the following week. Anecdotally it is a huge achievement for me to break into the top 50 women. Yes it is an ineffective way to measure one's own achievement (fewer people turn up when the weather is bad) but nevertheless if I have a slower time but break top 50 then that is massive for me. But now I'm told, being a woman means that my placing is no longer relevant.

you can take any number of park run records as they dont mean anything. Literally nobody cares bar people who are quite clearly mental. its 3 times and one of them is in wales on a course that barely anyone wants to run.

Your not being told as a woman your placing is irrelevant. your being told that as a HUMAN the organsiers dont set this community fun run up so that you can compare yourself to others.

As iv said before, feel free to set up your own race. How do i not know that half the field in the mens race are not on full throttle EPO?

I dont but then i dont care because its just a Parkrun round a local park with mums and dads and people with buggys and dogs.

I was once beaten into 2nd by a guy with a dog (15:15 time) did i complain????

You keep saying 'nobody cares' about times in a parkrun whilst swimming in a sea of posters who are saying that they all care. I don't know if you actually attend a parkrun or if your local one is very small/weird but my local parkrun has 400+ participants every week and the vast majority of conversations that take place down there are about performance- even the slower runners. People aren't patting themselves on the back just for waking up in the morning; the vast majority have some form of overarching time or performance goal. The fact that you don't acknowledge this makes me think that you either a) have never been to a parkrun in your life or b) don't talk to anyone when you're there.

i go to my local park run nearly every week and we have had roughly 600 people since it started. We do have 3 in my city too with much lower numbers. Like you i would suggest maybe that you need to talk to the people all running over 25 minutes who really dont care about where they stand in terms of age grading - christ most of them dont even bother to read that bit and those that do dont understand it.

In the middle aged sub sub elite male gamon runners section who desperately trade park run times while wishing they could leave their wives for there secretary, im sure they do talk about it. Its the same type of person who goes on a long sunday bike ride in full lycra and a £5k italian frame bike only to chug along 10 miles and then stop for coffee.

The fast runners generally use it as a tempo so dont care about seconds & the slower runners are just doing it to keep fit.

Ok, that confirms to me that you've never had a conversation with anybody at your parkrun if this is your level of chat. Your chat is absolutely brutal- please don't inflict that on anyone in real life. Anyway, can gladly confirm that those running slower than 25 mins aren't 'just there to keep fit' as you so glibly put it; as I speak to many of them every week. There isn't some magical time boundary where people stop caring about their performance. You honestly think a runner who runs 25 mins one week and then 28 the next will just shrug it off?

Anyway, everyone knows the reason parkrun removed the records, they're not fooling anyone with the participation crap. Brand new parkrunners wouldn't even know how to navigate to the age grading section/know what it is, so it's a total cop out to identify that as the reason.

a few local club races have folded as parkrun now use those courses. People can't see the point of paying to race on a course when they can do it for free.

Clubs lose out of much needed income.

You say the records don't mean anything, but they do. Particularly to those women who have trained damn hard to achieve them. Even that unrunnable one in Wales. Now the second fastest female finisher is told, your record is now taken by a man. How do you think that will make her feel? What is the point of competing when you are told that a guy can take your place.

You say again it is a community fun run. Then that's fine, take away all timings, placings and fixed 5k distance. Take away it's participation in power of 10 and runBritain rankings. If you really care about your time then use your own stopwatch. Very simple.

The point is not to religiously enforce gender rules or even PED usage but to stick up for women's rights. By taking their stand they are specifically taking those rights away.

I am guessing you are a man. Imagine being a woman and running the times you run (circa 15:15 or even say 17:17, 15:15 for a woman is next level). Everyone know how hard it's to get that fast, like seriously damn hard and hat's off to you for being that fit. You know how hard one needs to train to get that fast. You understand the dedication needed. Now imagine turning up to parkrun, running that fast and then missing out on first female across the line, not by someone in with a dog, but by a guy.

On the whole I agree parkrun in not a race but just a run. But everyone uses it as a race (even the sub 40 minute runners). As said if they want to be a fun community run then they need to be consistent and remove all timings and placings.

I think Mara Yamauchi brings up an important issue in this latest tweet.

Parkrun is not a race and should not be used for performance ranking. High time we disconnected and expunged these frivolous, miscategorised parkrun times from runbritain/powerof10.

But like i said it just goes back to my first point. You still can see your time. You can still see how your progressing. But its nice to see your still hung up on the 3 men in the middle of nowhere who ran as women, so much so it threatens your ability to run a community event and get your time just like you did every week before.

Its not Park Run hiding the agenda -Its you that wants to share some wierd transphobe agenda behind the fact that now you cant complain about trans people taking a record that never actually exisited.

Its just a bit of fun in a park on saturday morning its not about how you compare against someone else

Which, as we all know, would negate the USP of parkrun and make it exactly the same as any other 'fun run' that only 4 people show up to. The set distance and the proper timing are certainly what attracted me to take part intitially.

Come on, she got her steps in, that was the purpose of the challenge. If she wants to treat it as her own personal Olympics and got 'stung' by being pipped by someone younger than her or a trans person then I'd suggest she has some other problems that needs addressing.

The organisers of parkrun are telling you clearly it is not a competition and therefore it's irrelevant who finished first or last.

If a 17 year old girl wants to race her 44 year old dad at parkrun, great, rock on. That doesn't mean parkrun has to recognise her achievement as 'first female in the Smith family'.

The only thing they're celebrating is how many parkruns people have done.