parkrun

[RizzoTheRat]

Copenhagen double in the summer too but sadly 2018 was the last one of those.

[towser44]

640 at the Xmas Day one I attended (Delamere Forest). Beat their record attendance by over 150 and it's been going a good few years. Hopefully doing the double on New Years Day. Delamere at 9am and Northwich at 10.30am, but, parking was a nightmare at Delamere on Xmas Day, so hopefully we can get parked, the run starts on time, we can get round quickly enough and off the car park in time for the 10.30 start at Northwich.

[Halb]

I know someone doing the delamere/chester double. I've ran a 10k at Delamere (my pb of 51), it's a fantastic run. I wanna get the PR on my list one day, I'm a pretty rubbish tourist.

[C0ffin D0dger]

All set for tomorrow, kids have managed to poison me with their germs during the break but I'll wheeze round it. Was going to get the boy to do it with me by he's been coughing a lot so not sure how keen he'll be.

[T6 vanman]

Evanivitch said:

Went to Birmingham Cannon Hill for my 99th. Forgot my barcode. Harrumph.

Nice course good crowd.

Question to parkrunners, how quiet is your local.when the brief is being given?

Porthcawl is terrible for everyone talking during the brief (even on armistice weekend) and I've noticed other events are far better.

It might seem difficult but all the RD needs to do is … Authoratively state "Please be quiet for this briefing - the event won't begin until I have silence"
Our event is library quiet with our tiny 5'2" 45Kg RD, Although she rules with a rod of iron Thatcher would be proud off

Do they have a separate new beginners briefing? this way all the RD needs to do is report the Tourist, Milestones & thank the volunteers & anything appropriate

[Smitters]

NYD double done. First time for me. Shoved a buggy round Stonehouse and Gloucester City.

Glos had a great turnout with lots of 250 shirts. Looking at the results the mind boggles a bit though when I see 250 shirts and no V25 next to it. I get that volunteering is just that, but taking for half a decade without giving anything back baffles me.

Here's to a good 2019 of parkruns. Stretch goal of sub 20 with a buggy. Llanelli Coast here we come.

[Cybertronian]

Smitters said:

Glos had a great turnout with lots of 250 shirts. Looking at the results the mind boggles a bit though when I see 250 shirts and no V25 next to it. I get that volunteering is just that, but taking for half a decade without giving anything back baffles me.

I share your sentiments. A friend of mine is on some 150x runs and wants to chase the gold level obsessive badge (50+ runs in a year) via the Chrome extension; he asked if I wanted to chase the same goal and I stared him in the eyes and told him it would never happen as I like to marshal a couple of times each year. He, who is very reluctant to volunteer and makes up all sorts of poor excuses to avoid it, looked away rather sheepishly...


Was at Sutton Park parkrun and Perry Hall parkrun this morning for the New Year's Day double. Both events hit new attendance records due to local, larger events not laying on NYD runs. Perry Hall went from 223 to 560 (!), running out of finishers' tokens and available spots on the stopwatch (500 limit). I don't envy the results processor that has to untangle all that!

[Halb]

Smitters said:

Glos had a great turnout with lots of 250 shirts. Looking at the results the mind boggles a bit though when I see 250 shirts and no V25 next to it. I get that volunteering is just that, but taking for half a decade without giving anything back baffles me.

First thing I think is, ''. But then I reflect that that runner may be at 15ish? 3 a year is acceptable. I'm one away from my purple tee. I now wish there was one for 50/100.
At mine, the vast majority are the usual suspects, with one or two newbies. we were pretty low on the 29th, I guess ppl were away, but there were loads today, I ran, 4 away from my 100

[downthepub]

I did the NYD double at Eglinton and then Linwood, both just south of Glasgow. Both new courses to me and SWMBO; both lovely and with good running conditions - cold but sunny.

[Gilhooligan]

downthepub said:

I did the NYD double at Eglinton and then Linwood, both just south of Glasgow. Both new courses to me and SWMBO; both lovely and with good running conditions - cold but sunny.

Eglinton is next on my list. I’ve done most of the other Glasgow area ones.

Did Pollock and Victoria today. Ran over a minute faster on the second one! Shows how hilly Pollock is compared with super flat Victoria.

[downthepub]

Gilhooligan said:

Eglinton is next on my list. I’ve done most of the other Glasgow area ones.

Did Pollock and Victoria today. Ran over a minute faster on the second one! Shows how hilly Pollock is compared with super flat Victoria.

Mrs DTP is on a mission to do all the Scottish events, sitting at 30 of the 43 (she's done Bressay, arguably the hardest to get at). She grew up in Shawlands before moving back to Aberdeen as a child, as her then local park, Pollock Park is dear to her, she's saving it as her finale. I'd heard it was a bit chewy in the up and down stakes! We were due to do Vogrie on Saturday, but after arriving at 9.15 (and not checking the interwebs beforehand, a rookie error) were dismayed that it had been cancelled. That was going to be number 50 for her in 2018

Edit to say that Eglinton is a figure of eight, which means it's a nice change from the lappers and the out-and-backs. Not that there's anything wrong with those!

[Gilhooligan]

downthepub said:

Mrs DTP is on a mission to do all the Scottish events, sitting at 30 of the 43 (she's done Bressay, arguably the hardest to get at). She grew up in Shawlands before moving back to Aberdeen as a child, as her then local park, Pollock Park is dear to her, she's saving it as her finale. I'd heard it was a bit chewy in the up and down stakes! We were due to do Vogrie on Saturday, but after arriving at 9.15 (and not checking the interwebs beforehand, a rookie error) were dismayed that it had been cancelled. That was going to be number 50 for her in 2018

Edit to say that Eglinton is a figure of eight, which means it's a nice change from the lappers and the out-and-backs. Not that there's anything wrong with those!

That’s gutting about the cancelled Vogrie event. I was back at the parents for Xmas and was planning on doing it as that’s the local one, luckily I checked Facebook before going. It’s a great event but can be fairly muddy, better to do it in the summer anyway IMO.

I did 49 parkruns in 2017, before I knew about the parkrun challenge extension for Chrome. Was annoyed I came one short!

[RizzoTheRat]

Good turnout today, over 700 people at both the parkruns I ran, they usually get around 450-500. Poor funnel managers were doing great work but results processing seems to have been a nightmare. One of the newer ones in our area (Dinton Pastures) had over 600, they usually have about 200!

Sadly only managed 40 parkruns in 2018, and this year's likely to be even less

[john2443]

We had 780 and 820 at our local double and both were struggling with timing, backing up before the finish line, giving out tokens, running out of tokens and scanning - they normally get 300 and 450 and were overwhelmed. Fortunately I was off duty as we did Xmas day ('only' 685) so I just ran and watched the chaos unfold safe in the knowledge it was somebody else's problem that day!

There are murmurings among Event Directors that maybe the time has come to stop NYD doubles, it's not going to get quieter next year.

[KTF]

The double is fine if the event is prepared for it.

- Print off the additional sheets of barcodes or have a pen and paper to deal with the additional manuals.
- Make the finish funnel longer.
- Use the timer app as a third timer as there is no 500 limit on it.
- People who finish early and have a phone could install the scanner app so you can have additional scanners.

Last year at Netley we had 398 (normally get mid 200s) which was too close to our 400 tokens limit so this year we had additional tokens ready, an extended finish funnel and queue management for the scanning which was just as well as we tripped 430. Next year we are planning for 500+.

Lee-On-The-Solent which was a local 'second double' starting at half 10 got completely overwhelmed with 777 runners (normally 400ish) with people queuing to get into the finish funnel, walking parts of the course due to congestion, etc. Granted a visit from PSH probably didnt help but it made them realise and now they are revising their plans to cope with it better.

[john2443]

I think some events, although expecting larger numbers didn't expect such an increase - dealing with a big number is easy if you have gradually worked up to it - eg Bushy but most would have a problem with a one off increase but 1000 is easy. The concern is that next year numbers will go up by a similar amount.

I feel that a problem going from 400 to 777 is that somewhere in that range, maybe about 550, there's a tipping point where at the busiest finish time, more are finishing than token people can give out. When we have 450 we tootle along quite happily and hardly have to worry, but by 600, tokens and funnel managers have to earn their 'money'. Longer funnel obviously helps proving they guess how long to make it and have enough space.

Looks like nice weather tomorrow , cold but dry and sunny so I've printed tokens up to 814 just to be sure!

[C0ffin D0dger]

Looking forward to tomorrow. Cold and dry, I'm one of those weird types who actually enjoys the cold. Forecast says it may be just above freezing when I set off.

Be interesting to see what the turn out is like, always a few extra on New Year's resolutions but it won't be like NYD as we have two local runs but only my local one was on.

[Halb]

I love the cold too, makes me feel great. I'd quite like owt down to -10.

[RobM77]

Interesting. It's nice not to sweat, but I find my legs generally don't work as well in the cold and I go slower and/or have a higher risk of getting aches and pains afterwards. For me this point is below about 7/8 degrees in shorts, or below about 0 in thermal leggings. I was ok today on my 9km run, but could feel I wasn't quite on form. Generally speaking, my legs feel better the warmer it is; last summer when it was really warm (~30C) they felt amazing; the only problem being of course you can't keep your CV system at the right temperature after about ten minutes of running . I find the optimum temp for running is between these two, at about 15 degrees.

[Harpoon]

The mind boggles at the numbers of runners above.

Have done Liverpool Princes Park the last two NYDs and that jumped from 173 to 362.