Back to normal!
We’ve just had our forth Saturday this year. It’s been a slow start to the year what with the terrible weather conditions. Great if you’re on the slopes but not so great if you’re trying to put on an event. Nevertheless, our hardy and dedicated volunteers did everything they could to keep the show on the road. And you all responded by coming down in terrible conditions to run with us.
Last Saturday things at parkrun seemed to get back to normal. 26 Events took place and 3,357 of you completed the 5Km courses. Our previous best attendance on a Saturday was 3,096 back in November last year. So things are looking like we are getting back to business as usual.
We talk about the numbers quite a bit but to reassure you this is not really what it’s about. We would celebrate 20 folks turning out as enthusiastically as we do for the larger events.
I would like to welcome our newest event to the family. The Cambridge parkrun experiences its inaugural event this Saturday (30th January). I spent a fabulous day with event director, Heidi Fochtman and some other volunteers: Simon Redfern, David Mould, Louise Pryor and John Uff, going through the ropes in preparation for their first parkrun event. The course was piloted by 7 volunteers and we learned where we would need to pay more attention. So it’s good luck to Cambridge and I hope that we will continue to support them just as we do everywhere else.
There are a number of new events coming up in February. People are already registering for Coventry and Frimley but the prospect is for a couple more.
I am looking for volunteers to come forward to run two potential new events. The first is Richmond Old Deer Park and the Second id from Canbury Gardens in Kingston upon Thames. We are working with the local authorities for both these areas and these events could become a reality if we find the right folks to take the lead. If you are interested please contact Anita.
Sunderland to benefit from Lucozade Sport
The Lucozade Sport Team is sending qualified Sports Scientists to Sunderland parkrun to offer expert advice on hydration and nutrition which can help with your race strategy. So, if you haven’t already met your local Sports Scientist make sure you come down on Saturday 30th January to ask your questions, learn from their insight and receive pre and post race products.
Lucozade Sport is the Official Sports Nutrition Partner of parkrun, offering expert hydration and nutrition advice, to help you improve your performance and achieve your running goals. No one ever forgets where they first started running. This is why grass roots development is key to Lucozade Sport as a way of empowering people of all abilities and ages to experience something truly amazing.
Lucozade are committed to helping you and the hundreds of runners who take part each week across the country get the most out of your 5K run and the team at Lucozade Sport want to help fuel your passion for running, inspiring you to take on other running challenges.
See you all there
Sam (Event Director)
Event News
We have had some great feedback from the events:
- Cardiff celebrated its centenary(100 events) with a massive 193 runners. Well done Phil and team.
- Bromley, Newcastle and Milton Keynes all exceeded largest field sizes too.
- Stephen Hepples registered a course record at Albert Park of 15:25
- Juniors make a clean sweep at Milton Keynes. Sean Still set the men’s record at 16:53 while Revee Walcott-Nolan challenges anyone to beat 19:35
- Melissa Turner sets the bar at 17:13 at Newcastle
- Angela Hunter displaced the Sunderland record with a performance of 19:0
Drop me an email if you have an interesting parkrun related fact, happening or comment that you would like to share with all parkrunners.
Feedback from the field
I've only just discovered the "news" and "race reports" section of the Glasgow parkrun website and am thoroughly enjoying them! If I ever figure out how to use Twitter I'll use that too... Thoroughly enjoyed last Saturday's "XC" course...
[We're all] hugely appreciative of everything you and the rest of your team do, and value the thoughtfulness you put into your decisions (which I should imagine is pretty stressful at times).
Carry on doing a great job - you're all fab!
Kind Regards,
Clare Barr
I would like to express my sincere thanks for choosing me for the December Sweatshop running shoe prize.I received them on Monday and they are a perfect fit. I have not run in them yet due to the snow conditions but hope to christen them in this coming Saturday's Parkrun.
Being 68 i have chosen my slogan for this years events "Watch out there's a wrinkly about" in his state of the art daps.If i can run any faster remains to be seen.
Once again many thanks
Tony Dorsett (Les croupiers running club)
Hi Paul
It was terrific to see parkrun included in the Top Ten Action Sports 2010 in the Saturday Telegraph this week.
I discovered parkrun at Richmond in November 2007 and have seen the number of venues increase from 3 pages to 5 over the years.
I think parkrun is an amazing concept and try to be there most weeks either as a runner or volunteer.
Thank you for all your hard work and well done for making it such a success.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/active/7018471/Top-10-action-sports-for-2010.html
Becky
parkrunner of the week
Name: Alex Pellew
Club: NikeTown Runners
Age: 32
Home parkrun: Bushy Park
Occupation: Marketing
Number of Runs: 14(but have done about 8 different parkruns)
Number of times volunteered: 4
What do you do at parkruns: I run (mostly) and help out when I can
How has parkrun changed your running: parkrun has had a massive influence on my running. Before I started doing parkrun’s it was boom or bust for me. I’d train hard for an event and then pretty much stop running until the next challenge came along…I think a lot of you will relate to this! parkrun has given me a year round friendly and accessible running experience that has meant that I'm running regularly around other events. 5k's also a great distance for speed work and keeping your fitness up. A brisk Saturday morning 5k is also by far the best way to start the weekend. Gone (almost!) are the Saturday morning's spent nursing a hangover, although I have done all of my fastest times at parkrun after a few beers the night before…not sure what's happening there really …maybe our friends at Lucozade should run some tests on me?!
What do you like about parkrun: The fried breakfast after the run, tastes better when you’ve earned it. Seriously, the people, the variety of courses, the community who support the runs and everyone who makes a massive effort to make each run such a great experience. A sincere thank you to you all.
Most memorable or funniest parkrun moment: Helping out on the first few Roundshaw Downs events, it was great to see a new run taking shape…also was good to see my garden table being used for once . And it’s always a pleasure to beat an ageing friend of mine who occasionally attends parkrun, Mr Simon Charlesworth. You know who you are son, take a bow! Chris's dancing at Paul’s wedding has to get a mention too…river dance meets flash dance…priceless… Thank you to everyone at parkrun and everyone who helps out on the events. I hope 2010 is as good as 2009 for the parkrun family.
Happy Running!
Paul from parkrun
Crispy Corner
More on new results pages
Many thanks to everybody for their comments on the new results page, and apologies for not getting back to you all individually – I was busy last week overcoming a completely unrelated website crash (which, fingers crossed, should now be fixed), and switching over all the remaining events to the new system. Many of the comments were along the lines of “you’ve taken away my favourite table”. Actually, with a couple of minor exceptions (which nobody has yet commented on) – all the old tables are replicated in the new system, but you might need to dig around to find them. The two missing tables will be added back in, over the coming weeks, as will any missing bits of information from the existing tables. I thought it would be helpful to give a few tips on the new results system (thanks to Roger ‘eagle eyes’ Wilson for his advice here):
Almost every table can be re-sorted in whatever order you want (try clicking on the little arrows at the top of the columns)
Every single results page now has its own unique web address – this means you could bookmark your personal results page in your browser, or if you’re particularly pleased with your run one week, post it on a social networking site.
All the tables are linked together. Try hovering your mouse over the table – you will see many bits of information (runners name or age category, for example) are linked to other tables.
Now all the events have been moved over to the new system we will be able to start the process of improving the links from the global results page (http://www.parkrun.com/results.aspx) across to the appropriate event pages (on parkrun.org.uk). We also now have the opportunity to start creating brand new results tables – watch this space over the coming weeks.
More on barcode only system
Again, apologies to everybody I’ve been unable to get back to individually, but thanks to all of you for your feedback on last week’s article. As I suspected it might be, the feedback was mixed, ranging from “Excellent – the sooner, the better” to “You’re trying to take us into an Orwellian Big Brother state”. It would probably be useful to reiterate our reasons for going down the barcode only route – Our existing system which worked really well, when there was just one event, a couple of thousand runners on our system and average weekly attendance of 150, is now starting to creak with 25 events, 50,000 registered runners and total attendances in excess of 3,000. We are really struggling to uniquely identify all of our runners at the events. This has a huge knock on effect both for the administrators at each of our events (many of whom are putting in several hours of week away from the events to resolve these problems) and for us at parkrun HQ (corrections caused by misidentification currently account for about 14 hours of our workload each week; time we would much rather spend supporting our event teams, or expanding parkrun around the country).
The barcodes are small, unobtrusive (easily cut to credit card size), and contain much less information than the cards most of us carry around with us – the card contains just your name (in text) and your runner number (in normal text and in barcode form). If you don’t have access to a printer, the link to your barcode (found in the email version of this weekly newsletter, in your results email, and in the registration confirmation email), can be forwarded to a friend, relative or colleague who does. If you’re still unable to get hold of your barcode, please talk to your event team before they switch over.
Another question I was asked several times was “If I don’t have my barcode, does that mean I won’t get my result?” The official answer to this is that all events will have the discretionary ability to deal with those without barcodes, but all runners should be aware that this should not be relied on, and events will monitor this service to make sure it is not being abused.
And finally on this topic, each event will be deciding when to make the switch, and will communicate this date on their news page and at the events.
If you go down to the woods...
Many thanks to the volunteer team at Black Park – a few of us from Bushy & Bedfont Lakes headed over there on Saturday and were warmly welcomed. I think we were in rare unanimous agreement that it’s one of our most beautiful courses. If you get the chance, try it for yourself.
Cheers
Crispy