It motivates people to turn up, but some take it too far like the annoying guy at my local who races it every single week and makes excuses if he gets beat.
Parkrun have deleted or hidden (not sure which) a lot of their comparative data - course records (outright & age category), Fastest 500, sub-17 men, sub-20 women, age grade league, first finishers (though this remains on main parkrun homepage), most first finishes, sub-17 on.…
Hmmmm. Some pros like Wightman showed up to get in a little fast running. In doing so, he put the course record out-of-reach for some hobby joggers. They complained about fairness, hurt feelings, spoiling the spirit of fun, intimidating the less talented, etc. and Parkrun made this move.
I wonder when the 'run' bit of 'parkrun' might get changed to 'move' (with the M in upper case, that's always good these days)as it otherwise might create huge mental anxiety amongst those who dont run the thing
I wonder when the 'run' bit of 'parkrun' might get changed to 'move' (with the M in upper case, that's always good these days)as it otherwise might create huge mental anxiety amongst those who dont run the thing
Hmmmm. Some pros like Wightman showed up to get in a little fast running. In doing so, he put the course record out-of-reach for some hobby joggers. They complained about fairness, hurt feelings, spoiling the spirit of fun, intimidating the less talented, etc. and Parkrun made this move.
Jeez, just shift this 1% and it's Private Eye " World 1500m Champion wrecked my running dreams and self-esteem"
Mara Yamauchi has been running this campaign for some time now.
Parkrun have probably just had enough and frankly I don't blame them. It's an inclusive weekly community activity run 100% by volunteers, just trying to get people who wouldn't normally get out to be active. And it's been pretty damn successful by that measure. The competitive element was always just a fun added extra, but for some competitive types it seems the need to win at all costs is too strong.
Mara Yamauchi, a two-time British Olympian runner, said the weekly 5km race was sending 'an appalling message' to women and girls by allowing trans contestants to compete as females.
For some peculiar reason, Parkrun UK has decided to delete course race history, age category records and fastest finishers.
Anyone know why?
"We know that our websites are an important source of information for all parkrunners, especially for those who are new and yet to take part.
Our insight tells us that some of the content we share and how we present it can be off-putting or create opportunities for misunderstanding (e.g. parkrun is not a race but we list most things like most first finishes).
So in the coming days we will no longer publish data such as attendance records, course records, fastest finishers, most first finishes, and age graded or category records.
The results pages for every event, your personalised results email and your individual profile pages will remain unchanged."
The sport once again bends it's knee to accommodate for the complaints of the slower and entitled complainers. I'm sure the next step will be to remove numerical finisher placings. Inclusivity for all, except not for the people towards the front. The organisation is a joke.
FWIW you can still find the course record for every course, just go to 'Event History' and 'Sort By' then select 'Male (or female) Finisher Time' and the fastest result will come to the top.
so apparently when you sign up for parkrun you can select any gender you like. This has resulted in several transwomen and straight up men pretending to be females and snatching the female course record at a lot of places. Some female athletes called parkrun out on this but out of fear of not appearing inclusive they decided to wipe ALL of the records.
Mara is shoe-horning the update to fit her own political narrative.
Parkrun removing Age-Gradings or a list of Sub-17 men has nothing to do with her argument about Male's Identifying as Women, so it's clearly not motivated by that debate. Bore off, Mara.
surely the thought process isnt that the abolition of record times across the whole of british parkrun has been prompted just by the male-to-female trans thing which Mara (eminently sensible as ever and notably at 180 degrees from His Sebship on applying fairness at sub elite level) has championed? Given that no self-identifying men can be compared to self-identifying women's former-course records, and I'd guess at least 98% of women don't care what their course record is, we are talking about less than 1% of parkrunners who can be practically and/or emotionally directly impacted by the trans aspect (I totally agree with MY that this notional 1% need fairness for where they sit within the sport). There's the obvious alternative that parkrun could have taken.
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