Parkrun UK deleted race times / course records

I would love to see the research where they found those particular bits of the website put potential runners off.

As a 15.40 fella, you're at the speedier end, im surprised you've never managed first finisher with that sort of speed. Whats your experience been of what the slower runners think of you?

But seeing the world differently doesn't necessarily mean seeing the world more accurately or being more judicious and fair-minded.

The change you say younger people are more accepting of might not be change in a positive direction.

For all the banging on that young people today do online about "diversity and inclusion" and all the finger wagging orders they dish out telling others to "be kind" and "do better," there's considerable evidence that today's younger generations are less tolerant and more ageist, ableist, sexist, misogynistic and personally abusive than older generations.

Boys and young men in their teens and 20s appear to be have more animus towards women and to feel more threatened by and resentful of women's rights and advancement than older men do.

A survey of 32,469 respondents in 27 EU countries conducted 2021 found that

Young Men Feel the Most Threatened by Advances in Women’s Rights

Young men between the ages of 18 and 29 are more likely to believe promoting women’s rights threatens male opportunities than older men. Researchers suggest this modern sexism could motivate young men to vote for right-wing radical politicians who promote anti-feminist views.

neurosciencenews.com

Young Men Feel the Most Threatened by Advances in Women’s Rights - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience News

Young men between the ages of 18 and 29 are more likely to believe promoting women's rights threatens male opportunities than older men. Researchers suggest this modern sexism could motivate young men to vote for right-wing r...

Open link

Today, pre-teen and teenage boys in the UK are committing sexual assaults and abuse of girls at extremely high rates.

The UK's National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) last month released data showing that in 2022, boys age 17 and under were responsible for more than half - 52% - of the 107,000 sex offenses against children reported to police in England and Wales:

Boys are watching violent porn on their smartphones then going on to attack girls, police have said, as new data showed [male] children are now the biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against other children.

Police data shows 52% of alleged offenders in England and Wales are minors – a situation exacerbated by ‘accessibility of violent porn’

Police received reports of 14,800 rapes and sexual assaults against children aged 10 to 17 where the suspect was classed as a child, the overwhelming majority being boys.

theguardian.com

Children now ‘biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against children’

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/vikramdodd

Police data shows 52% of alleged offenders in England and Wales are minors – a situation exacerbated by ‘accessibility of violent porn’

Open link

Earlier this month, the results of a representative survey of 3,716 people in the UK aged 16+ was published showing that many younger people do indeed see the world differently - but not necessarily in a better way that bodes equally well for everyone.

In fact, the survey found that teenage boys and young men in their 20s in the UK today are no more supportive of equal opportunity and fair play for women and girls than middle-aged and older men in the UK are. It's just that teenage boys and younger men still in their 20s are more likely than middle-aged and older men to characterize themselves and their same-age male peers as liberal and progressive.

Teenage boys and young men with the least personal life experience were found to be much more likely than older men with decades of life experience under their belts to give answers showing they have chips on their shoulders about girls and women. Considerably more blokes age 16-29 than older blokes said they think girls and women in the UK have easier and better lives than boys and men there do.

Only 12% of UK men aged 60+ said they thought men in GB have harder and worse lives than women - compared to 19% of younger and middle-aged men.

Twice as many boys and men 16 to 29 (30%) as middle-aged men and men over 60 in the UK said they believe that life is getting harder for men and easier for women. 19% of boys and men 16 to 29 believe men in the UK will have much harder lives than women in the UK 20 years from now.

Teenage boys and young men are also just as likely as middle-aged and older men to agree that "feminism has done more harm than good."

But teenage boys and young men in their 20s are actually far more likely than older men to say they have positive views of Andrew Tate. Tate - a 37-year old "influencer" who champions extreme misogyny and encourages men and boys to engage in sexual violence, battery, abuse and degradation of women and girls - has been accused of multiple rapes and sex trafficking of girls and women.

One in five (21%) UK boys and men aged 16 to 29 who have heard of Andrew Tate said they have a favourable view of him – three times the share of men aged 30 to 59 (7%) who said the same, and far greater than the proportion of men aged 60+ (2%).

Among those who said they've heard about Tate’s statements on men and women specifically, 30% of British boys and young men aged 16 to 29 - a much higher proportion than men of other age groups - said they believe Tate raises valid and important points to "real threats to male identity and gender roles."

One in five, or 20%, of UK boys and young men 16-29 said they do not find Tate's views and statements about women to be offensive - double the proportion of men aged 30 to 59 (9%) who said the same.

kcl.ac.uk

Masculinity and women's equality: study finds emerging gender divide in young people's attitudes

@kingscollegelon

Young men are notably less positive than young women about the impact of feminism

Open link

He’s patently talking nonsense about his time. No one who’s run that sort of time would be so dismissive of women’s concerns or so unaware of the clear physical advantage men have.

He also claimed to get overtaken by a chap with a dog when he clocked 15.15.

Please does not spread hate, misinformation and transphobia. Please does not. We is not need hate and bigotry on LRC.

Please does not mis-gendering. Please does not.

He's omnipresent. He's both magnificently gracious in defeat, (he would probably say finishes second), manages to both race and not race at the same time, and seeks to advise the womenhood of park run that they are not racing, despite evidence showing otherwise. He's a man with no competitive spirit at park run only but manages to race, in his own words, to second place and mid 15s in park run. This is enabled by him claiming that park run distances vary considerably from week to week, so he can still claim to be both slow and fast at the same time. A feat only matched by the fastest and fittest German Shepherd dog on earth coincidentally won a park run he was in.

Despite all of this self-assumed superiority, he can be easily programmed in advance by triggering him, like a little robot. Probably not as well educated as he thinks, judging by the cliched responses he tends to use "gammon is a favourite, but he consistently mis-spells it). Very amusing though, due to those predictable response. If theres a degree, its probably an engineering degree, possibly achieved on day release.

He's either God, or has a Cluster B pd. Anyways, what we call an unreliable narrator. No theory of mind - he cannot imagine the effect that having a man beat a woman to a deserving first place might have.

Why are you talking like Gollum?

Here is an alternative idea.

Why not organize a community running event that focuses on physical wellness? If you want to time yourself, you can do it on your own. But no official time or place will be recorded. You can measure your own progress by running the same course in multiple occasions. After all, it's your personal progress that should matter to your wellness, and not comparison with other runners.

Why doesn't anyone think of such a running event? It could be quite popular with the mass public, 90+% of which have no chance to win any award in conventional races.

Already 120 parkruns cancelled this weekend. It seems the backlash has begun.

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/cancellations/

Weather in the UK has been particularly dreadful this week, very few of those cancellations seem related to this

I am trying to keep count of how many times KoshJerr has written “your” instead of “you’re”. If there was a record table of posters doing this, he’d definitely be at the top. He’ll probably call me a ‘looser’ for pointing this out :)

I'm genuinely not sure if you're being sarcastic or not but noone would turn up to that. The reason most people turn up to parkrun again and again is because it's timed and I've seen people fighting the clock/for a PB who are 30mins plus, that is their 'win'. Local charities put on running groups like you're describing all the time and if they're lucky they get about 6 folk who soon lose interest.

Just off to clock under 17 at least (taking it easy)

Hope all your little placards paint has dried off and you can be shouting "down with this sort of thing" while everyone else enjoys themselves

You've asked for my 'solution' to their current pickle. As far as I see it, they have two choices:

- Unequivocally state that the categories are for birth sex only/create a 'trans' category that doesn't affect the female results. All of this goes away.

- Continue to appease the men running in the women's category (and the online activists like yourself who've never run since they were 6 years old but pretend that they do during online debate) by chipping away at the features that made parkrun desirable to so many; remove integration with runbritain and power of 10 because this tiny number of runners are incompatible with these professional UK ranking systems; over time make results 'individual' only (i.e. you just see your own time and place); results eventually stop being recorded altogether; people stop turning up in their current numbers because what's the point- they may as well run untimed with a couple of pals at a nearer park at a more convenient time.

I don’t think it goes away, as parkrun don’t/can’t enforce this rule with their current processes, and their minimum barriers to entry. People can set up a parkrun account with whatever age/gender they want, and there are no processes in place to stop that. Short of having some kind of validation process for accounts, which would be all but impossible for the 9m parkrunners, and also go against their ‘minimum barriers if entry’ ethos, I don’t think it’s easy to do. I could today set up an account as a 75 year old female, run as that, and I would appear in the results, and my result would not get taken down. I really can’t see them enforcing a trans category, as it would break their ethos, but yes that would be an answer, but I don’t think it’s an easy change to make for parkrun.

By 'all of this goes away' I mean parkrun have made their categories clear and the heat goes from them on to the person who is infracting. At the moment, the heat is almost entirely on parkrun for essentially encouraging these athletes to compete in the wrong sporting category. If they state birth sex only/trans category but that they don't expect volunteers to police it (how could they?), I think that would go a hell of a long way. The current measures feel like a temporary fudge that don't please anyone.

The very loud contingent of GC activists who have held parkrun's feet to the flame on this issue for the last year absolutely do not want to see a separate trans or non-binary category. They want men and women categories, and they specifically want any trans-women runners to publicly register as men in order to be allowed to run these community fun runs. This is their goal, it's a political goal, and they will not stop until they achieve it. You may think they will settle for less but their goalposts will move instantly.

Parkrun have wisely looked at their mission and selected the second option, and now that eyes are on powerof10/runbritain they would be wise to select the same. Parkrun seem to believe they have data that proves the number of runners who will miss the competitive aspect is small, and that there are potentially new runners who were formerly put off by the dominance of the competitive aspect. Obviously the kind of people who use this site will think differently, but frankly we're all living in a yellow bubble here.

As someone who has 'raced' parkruns as well as jogged them after injury/ paced for various speeds, they are way off if they think that the majority aren't partially inspired by the 'competitive' element. I've watched two 50+ women racing each other at the finish at around 45 minute pace! Of course, in a survey, people will say the time is irrelevant and they go entirely for the community but once you've been to a few hundred events you realise that at every level there is a significant competitive aspect there for most people, even if they're just trying to beat their own time from the week before.

The new measures aren't going to resolve the complaint of women runners that trans runners have beaten them to a top 3 place. Which is still listed (and often printed in local newspapers, media, etc as well as Power Of Ten and Run Britain).

One of the recent posts on mumsnet was from a female runner who was really upset that a trans runner had beaten her to third place. She had come into running in her thirties having been sedentary all her life and got her times down through hard work, and that third place would have been something for her to cherish.

Park run could easily take a stand on this by dq ing from the results athletes who cheat ie make it a rule that if they receive a complaint about an athlete being trans finishing in the top 3 women's results, investigate to a basic level and wipe their result.

Instead, they want to continue throwing women under the bus and this attitude seems to encourage some others to belittle them for "not being fast enough".

When you think that one of the trans park run womens course record holders is the notorious Lauren Jeske, who is still in jail for stabbing and injuring 3 British Athletics officials who were investigating Lauren's cheating, it makes a mockery of the whole thing.