I can’t see why first timers are put off looking at fast times, surely if results are there they would also be encouraged to see the slower times?
wrt records, personally I rarely measure myself against them or care. I categorise them in much the same way as many Strava records which over the last 15yrs or so now look unattainable whether genuine, GPS error, eBike etc.
Not wanting to put you in the role of defending Parkrun @BadAsh , I sense you’re as bemused as I am.
park run…
it makes them feel as though they are being inclusive…
The parkrun organisation, so they don’t now have to make a potentially controversial decision?
But what is this decision?
I am so lost by all of this!!!
Whether transwomen should be included in women’s results
Its all kicking off on twitter with Mara Yamauchi, who has been outspoken about certain women’s records being held by “men”; not just her but she has been at the forefront for a while. Its all hit a head and Parkrun, rather than face up to the issue just pulled “results”
This benefits Parkrun only as they don’t have to face up to the elephant in the room. A simple fix to fall in line with most NGB’s on Open and Female categories would solve everything, but “its not a race” so that’s their stance now.
Sorry, my post was was a bit confused. As am I, with the explanation given about the records putting people off doing it. However, at the same time I can appreciate parkrun has grown into a behemoth and as a result is under huge scrutiny across all aspects.
The actions take still don’t exactly completely close of the transgender debate:
Results show male/female.
Results show X place of Y in gender.
Event history still show the fastest “male” and “female” finishes for each event.
Unless they completely remove gender then the door is still open for someone to be upset?
I’m surprised they still show the number of events someone has done. Must be intimidating turning up to your first parkrun knowing others have done 250+
Personally to me that would be (a very tiny bit) more intimidating than knowing someone identifying as a male has run a low 15 on the course and someone identifying as a female has run a low 17
For categories to exist, they have to be the sporting categories, so therefore not gender, otherwise all categories other than open male would be dominated by natal males, not the ostensible category.
By removing the sporting categories, this removes the problem of parkrun having to collect that data, the data doesn’t remotely meet parkruns participation aims, and it’s certainly going to discourage people from participating.
Listing by gender is just that, it’s not a sporting category, and I think it’s a reasonable compromise.
the professionally upset will always be upset. I think Jim hit the nail with age also, No one has checked my age, or ID so could I get away with signing up as a 90 year old and take all the records (actually I probably wouldn’t still 
). I’m not sure why you would, but then I don’t get those that cheat at Zwift or get upset because someone hasnt bothered to update their weight in a year.
makes sense, have “results” , they dont matter its not a race, but don’t store records
Out side of the gender debate, it allows park run, like all sports, to portray themselves to be inclusive without actually making the necessary changes to make themselves more inclusive…
I kind of get that but if the likes of bongo turns up and does a sub 17 they’re still going to see those massive hands coming towards them at speed which must be more intimidating than a website!
My local one! Haven’t done it for ages but it’s always got massive numbers of participants. Pretty quick in summer when the grass is hard.
The statistics removal thing caused uproar in our running club Whatsapp. Is interesting because the chap who holds the highest number of first finishes worldwide now doesn’t have anywhere that shows off that particular stat anymore. He’s on the chat and was a bit disappointed about that. To be fair I would be too, it’s quite a cool USP.
I know a lot of the running club community are interested in course records, age grading etc so maybe this some of this stuff finds a home somewhere else? ParkrunPower maybe
Or Tim Grose of Power of 10 fame might see a gap in the market to provide some parkrun stats. I wonder if they have APIs?
Our local parkrun has special vests for the 100 and 250 milestone folks to wear on their milestone race. I suspect that will go soon.
It will go on until someone complains about it not being inclusive to new people!
Or Tim Grose of Power of 10 fame might see a gap in the market to provide some parkrun stats. I wonder if they have APIs?
They might not have APIs but all the data is on the web so people could just scrape the data and create a new site as you say. If that happens, hopefully people don’t start complaing otherwise the next move might be to remove times from the website!
One thing (I think) I’ll miss is seeing the course records at the footer on event pages. Now as someone said you need to go to the event results history and sort by male/female first finishers to see the records.
I’ll also miss the removal of the people search (which I think they said was a GDPR issue) although I hardly ever used it.
I like the age gradings we get (as I’m getting slower but older then this is the only number that can really increase for me!). Sometimes I sort the results by age grade and see how high up I can get. I’m pleased that’s still available.
The 5K app must surely be using an API to get all the data. I know they have/had things on the site to try and stop people scraping results off of the site. Back to the removal of people search, I’ve used that on the 5K app recently to add people I know as ‘friends.’ I wonder if that search functionality will be removed sooner or later.
There seems to be a 100 and 250 ‘cape’ that a few people have worn at our event on milestone runs.
in Ewell?
My local parkrun has already called it for tomorrow, it does get a bit wet in places and we’ve had a lot of rain in the last 48 hours so I’ll go elsewhere if I do one.
I strongly ours will be canned as well, it’s a mudfest and the river floods easily.