If you have any interest in parkrun, you’ll probably have noticed the furore surrounding the recent deletion of all course records and the “Most Events Table” from the parkrun website. parkrun have issued a statement saying this is to make a more “inclusive” atmosphere and encourage slow runners and walkers to join in. They believe that the competitive nature of striving for course records might interfere with the parkrun ethos of “everyone is welcome, no matter how slow”. They considered the publication of course records a “barrier to participation”
(I will quickly add that some people think that parkrun did this because some TERFs kicked up a fuss about trans women achieving the female course records but for the purpose of this post I will take parkrun at their word and believe this was not a factor. I will just say four words on the matter: trans women are women.)
I looked back on my early days as a parkrunner. I actually registered in 2012, when I was 1.5 times the size I am now and able to run/walk 5k in 40-45 minutes. I looked at the results for Finsbury Park, where the last participant finished in 34 minutes, and it was a big nope. The sheet of barcodes I’d printed went in a box, and remained there until 2017. I hadn’t even looked at the course records, they were of no relevance to me. I didn’t care whether there were people there who ran fast, I only wanted to know if there would be other people there like me. And this is the same for every race I enter. I check out the number of participants, the cut off, and the number of people who are likely to finish around my time. The top runners don’t even come into it – after all, I probably won’t even see them!
I decided to do a little Facebook survey of my friends, asking particularly for responses from those who might like to take part but felt put off for some reason and who consider themselves to be slow, though everyone was welcome to respond so long as they were not regular parkrunners. These are the answers I got:
- Don’t like the local course/location – 6
- Don’t like people. Would rather do it alone. – 7
- Don’t like running or walking – 3
- Saturday 0900 is unsuitable – 16
- Privacy concerns such as photography and publication of age group – 3
- 5k not far enough to be worth the effort of attending – 5
- Feel dispirited because everyone is faster than me – 4
- Don’t like the jolly atmosphere and people cheering me on – 3
As you can see none of my respondents listed “feel intimidated after seeing course records”. In fact I got the distinct impression that none of them had ever seen the course records. Based on my (admittedly not terribly scientific) research, the biggest barrier to participation is parkrun’s insistence that all events must take place on Saturday mornings. This excludes anyone who works on Saturdays or who has to look after their children at this time, which of course means that it excludes a lot of less well-off people, the very people parkrun seem to be wanting to open their doors to. It also seems to me that if they want to attract people who are not accustomed to regular exercise, an afternoon event might be kinder to those who are fond of a Saturday lie in.
Other than changing the time and making some tweaks to the privacy of profiles and photographs, it seemed that it wasn’t so much that my friends felt they wanted to go to parkrun but felt excluded, it was just that they wouldn’t enjoy it. They wanted to walk further, alone, or in peace. parkrun isn’t for them and that is fine. Believe it or not, you can’t please everyone. Only four people mentioned feeling intimidated by others being faster, and their concerns (just like mine when I started) weren’t about the number of fast runners, it was about the lack of slow runners. Runners said they didn’t like “being near the back despite running in what I thought was a decent time” and walkers didn’t like “being last by so far that I felt I was holding the volunteers up from their post run cafe”. It seems to me that to get round this parkrun really do need to ship in a job lot of slowies by whatever means necessary – perhaps bribery at the local old people’s home?
It’s seven years since my first parkrun now and I’ve done 197 runs with an average time of 38:32 and a PB of 31:53. I’m currently roughly at the 75% centile in the results each week, which means there is absolutely fuck all chance of me getting a course record or an age category record. I probably still qualify as one of the less athletic types they are trying to coax in, despite being well and truly indoctrinated for some years now. But despite this I feel strongly opposed to their removal. Fast runners are not my enemy, I did not ask to be included at their expense. If anything, I find their achievements inspiring. I’ve always remarked that the front of the field and the back of the field tend to have more in common with each other than they do with the middle. You don’t see anyone running a 15 minute 5k taking it easy; rarely do you see anyone taking it easy at the back either. If I’m capable of running a 35 minute 5k there is no way in absolute hell that I’m doing it in 40, facing the indignity of losing sight of the person in front, the well-meaning “you can do it”s and “well done for getting off the sofa”s. In the middle, however, you get plenty of would-be 25 minute runners having a chat and becoming 30 minute runners in the process, swapping one unremarkable time for another. They annoy me far more than the course records. And I hate the assumption that because I’m slow, I don’t care about challenging myself or improving my times, and I think to myself, if parkrun doesn’t value and recognise someone else’s 14:53, they’re certainly not going to care about the 31:53 I just slogged my guts out for. Maybe I should just go to a race instead, sometimes they seem far more inclusive to participants at ALL levels.
7:07 
Great post Suzi.
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