Parkrun..

Sunny Dayz

edisonolmy wrote: »

I think it is possible to stay on the football pitches at Athlone isn't it? Run alongside the tarmac

You can run along the edge of the pitches, although the first time I seen people do that I thought they were trying to take a short cut! You may have to cross the concrete very briefly on loops 3 & 4 to get from the pitch to the cross country trail.


Or you could just ditch the spikes and enjoy the Parkrun, muck included!

edisonolmy

Short spikes then... just endure the pain on the tarmac. Could you have an alternative course on a bad day - say 25 laps of the indoor track...

L.Jenkins

With respect to the indoor track, I imagine it would be off limits to the Parkrun. As for the outdoor running track, I suppose it would be good if people could complete a bulk of the run on the pitch, the complete the remainder on the outdoor track, as the crowd have dispersed considerably so their not on top of each on the actual track.

BeenMadAgain

edisonolmy wrote: »

Short spikes then... just endure the pain on the tarmac. Could you have an alternative course on a bad day - say 25 laps of the indoor track...

25 laps would certainly make the funnel manager's job more, erm... , interesting... :eek:

edisonolmy

The indoor track remark was clearly meant as a joke. Whenever Enniskillen was still at the Lakeland forum it once ran 12.5 laps of a cinder track as an alternative.

We're toying with the idea of having an alternative Stormont course that makes runners take on the big hill, over and over again.

edisonolmy

Sad to see Tramore Valley postponed indefinitely - Cork joins Harare and Reykjavik on the list of cities that had, and lost, parkruns

CassieManson

edisonolmy wrote: »

Sad to see Tramore Valley postponed indefinitely - Cork joins Harare and Reykjavik on the list of cities that had, and lost, parkruns

Seems that Operation Transformation is the culprit here, or who ever decided to combine the two efforts. This should be mentioned on OT but I bet it won't be.

I hope other Park Runs are not impacted, but maybe next year they may have to consider whether to allow/encourage the OT participation.

I know in Marlay there have been some very busy days, with issues getting in and out of the car parks, I am sure that others saw big increases also.

Amigaman

Hi Cassie - TVp was always going to be well attended looking at the registrations pre - Operations Transformation it was consistently in the top 10 worldwide - fact is there is pent up demand in Cork for a parkrun ( small p always one word :-) ) O.T was I grant you a precipitating factor but it was going to grow to that size anyway . Other parkruns have grown and have been lucky to have landlords that saw the benefit to the local community and have worked with parkrun to solve the problem ... Cork City Council like the luddites they are have hid behind " Health and Safty" and done nothing ...you are talking about a council that has already conducted ( at taxpayers expense dont forget ) a feasibility study on pedestrian access to what they have billed as a "peoples park" which has cost us ...the taxpayer somewhere in the region of 3 million so far ... and the first regular event to use gets cancelled - what could have been a feather in the cap of CCC now looks like an unmitigated disaster

sconhome

martyboy48 wrote: »

Any idea of location/route?? Would be nice to have an alternative..
Wasn't a fan of the knocknacarra route but great work put in by the RD there.

Renville Park has been confirmed as the location.

It was originally considered for Parkrun but as it is quite car dependent it was ruled out initially and Knocknacarra went ahead. Now with the issues at Knocknacarra being prevalent Renville is back on stream as a release valve.

spaceylou

CassieManson wrote: »

Seems that Operation Transformation is the culprit here, or who ever decided to combine the two efforts. This should be mentioned on OT but I bet it won't be.

I hope other Park Runs are not impacted, but maybe next year they may have to consider whether to allow/encourage the OT participation.

I know in Marlay there have been some very busy days, with issues getting in and out of the car parks, I am sure that others saw big increases also.

Surely increased participation is good? And much like gyms are super busy for the first few weeks of the year, most of the time it evens out to manageable levels.

CassieManson

spaceylou wrote:

Surely increased participation is good? And much like gyms are super busy for the first few weeks of the year, most of the time it evens out to manageable levels.

Yes increased participation is great but most parks have a limit in terms of access and parking as well as impact to other users of the park. I don't think Tramore Valley is even open to the public yet but seems to have reached capacity. Am just very disappointed as I go to Cork regularly and it was great to have a park run in the city. Hopefully they will sort it out or find another location.

edisonolmy

Is OT a walking initiative or running? We dont have it up here so curious. There appear to be a lot of walkers taking part in new parkruns in Ireland. We dont get many, if any, walkers in the north.

More generally, should walkers be encouraged to take part in an event aimed at runners?

I have no strong view either way. Be interested to hear what others think

edisonolmy

Is Oranmore replacing Knocknacarra or will the latter remain? There was talk of Loughrea and Tuam at one stage too wasn't there?

liquid engineer

edisonolmy wrote: »

Is OT a walking initiative or running? We dont have it up here so curious. There appear to be a lot of walkers taking part in new parkruns in Ireland. We dont get many, if any, walkers in the north.

More generally, should walkers be encouraged to take part in an event aimed at runners?

I have no strong view either way. Be interested to hear what others think

OT would be more walking than running, but some people do it as a couch to 5k type thing which aims to be jogging by the end of it.

In any case, walkers have always been welcome at parkruns. Despite the name, it isn't exclusively for runners.

edisonolmy

What's going on in Falcarragh with all the unknowns - is it just people not registering, or is it an issue with a scanner?

I've often wondered what I'd do if a scanner failed on me - would I commit to manually inputting runner details? Our numbers are small enough, and we run two scanners, meaning failure would mean about 50-70 having to be inputted. I hope it never actually comes to that, although we did have to manually input a load on New Year because we only had 430 tokens and more than 500 runners.

Sunny Dayz

edisonolmy wrote: »

What's going on in Falcarragh with all the unknowns - is it just people not registering, or is it an issue with a scanner?

I'm guessing everyone just showed up because of the OT cameras last weekend...

L.Jenkins

Sure the Camera man when he was in Athlone got nearly as much exercise as everyone else running around the place.

edisonolmy

When I see a camera, I tend to avoid it. Never understood why people go mad for a camera.

Darkglasses

edisonolmy wrote: »

When I see a camera, I tend to avoid it. Never understood why people go mad for a camera.

I pretend like I haven't seen the camera or don't care, but I'm 100% trying to get a cool photo for my facebook page :pac:

edisonolmy

I'll always give a photographer a thumbs up, however, and suck my belly in

robinph

Darkglasses wrote: »

I pretend like I haven't seen the camera or don't care, but I'm 100% trying to get a cool photo for my facebook page :pac:

Absolutely spot on.

Over the last mile of London Marathon I'm not only trying to hang on to the pace for dear life, I'm also trying to make sure that I'm not dribbling, the guy in fancy dress isn't anywhere near me and I'm in the best position for when I run past the next photographer hidden behind the next advertising hoarding. It's tough to get all these things right.

I might smile occasionally for parkrun photographers, but it's rare. Getting a good looking photo from a parkrun is tricky as well. Although you'll not have to pay for it, you don't want to ruin an otherwise beautiful shot of a scenic backdrop with you running along in front gracefully with a daft thumbs up or wave.

edisonolmy

The course at Stormont was designed with photographs of runners in mind. Originally it was to be the reverse of what it is now, but now you get shots of people running down the hill with parliament buildings in the background

https://www.facebook.com/stormontparkrun/photos_stream

cjt156

robinph wrote: »

...you don't want to ruin an otherwise beautiful shot of a scenic backdrop with you running along in front gracefully with a daft thumbs up or wave.

Or re-arranging the junk...

robinph

cjt156 wrote: »

Or re-arranging the junk...

A lot of my pictures from one years London Marathon taken at several different locations had me either wiping my nose, or eating a gel.

davedanon

robinph wrote: »

or eating a gel.

You're supposed to rip them open and drink the contents.

Amigaman

Good Time to interject this into the parkrun photo conversation....My son says I have 3 parkrun faces
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5QGMy5Bnw0

Sunny Dayz

I've got great timing for the parkrun photos - the parkrun camera seems to only come out on the weekends that I'm NOT there! Hehe!!

sconhome

edisonolmy wrote: »

Is Oranmore replacing Knocknacarra or will the latter remain? There was talk of Loughrea and Tuam at one stage too wasn't there?

No both will remain.

One of the organisers who works with Knocknacarra is leading as RD for Oranmore. They discovered a lot of people travel from teh south side across so having them separate should ease the congestion and pressure on limited parking facilities in Knocknacarra.

edisonolmy

Oranmore is also on the Dublin side of Galway - from a tourism point of view, which is good

Yintang

Hoping to finally get to do a parkrun this weekend! I'll likely head to Shanganagh. However, as I'll be going via public transport, I'm just wondering if there'll be a possibility to leave my warm jacket anywhere? I presume there are volunteers at the finish line, so could leave it there... Anyone familiar with this parkrun?

chinguetti

Yep, no problem leaving stuff at the start of any of the parkrun events I've been at. Enjoy it and hope you come back for more runs.

BeenMadAgain

Plenty of parkruns with pacers tomorrow, which is good to see. 7 at Tralee! I've set up a page that picks up the pacers from the volunteer rosters, if anyone is interested:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WQnBLeo5BGuXzy0nki4WNUSQmBPu5uwEcTypuARQerk/pubhtml?gid=282821787&single=true

Although I know some runs don't use their roster, so there are likely to be other events with pacers that aren't picked up.

I've found running with a pacer really useful to stop me setting off too fast, but I'd need to work on my own pace a bit before I could do the role myself.

Amigaman

Nice one benMad :-)

GalwayGrrrrrl

Yintang wrote: »

Hoping to finally get to do a parkrun this weekend! I'll likely head to Shanganagh. However, as I'll be going via public transport, I'm just wondering if there'll be a possibility to leave my warm jacket anywhere? I presume there are volunteers at the finish line, so could leave it there... Anyone familiar with this parkrun?

I haven't been to that Parkrun but you can usually leave jackets at the finish line area. Just be aware that Parkrun take no responsibility for the security of the things left as the park is public- so don't leave any valuables. Enjoy your run.

ionapaul

Ran in Knocknacarra this morning, huge crowd! The grass was still quite waterlogged, so really had to remember to stay on the path/gravel as we went around.

BeenMadAgain

2000 posts on the parkrun thread!

aoboa

BeenMadAgain wrote: »

2000 posts on the parkrun thread!

Totally deserved too.
In awe at the fact that so many people give their time to make it work in so many places so amazingly well week in week out.
All kinds of awesome when you think about it.

edisonolmy

Stormont was off last Saturday so I went along to Ormeau to volunteer. They asked me to do run director.

Now, I managed 500-plus on new year's Day without any hint of nerves, but as soon as they handed me a megaphone to do the briefing, the nerves hit me hard. Why? I know the route, the runners, what to say.

It all went a bit bad cop towards the end, but at least runners appeared to realise I was joking about hunting down people who don't return tickets.

davedanon

Since there seem to be so many parkrun organisers/RDs gathered here from around the country, can I just ask if there has been any evidence of what you might call 'parkrun banditry'? I'm talking about people deliberately cutting courses in order to have a spuriously fast time included in the official results. One of the, no doubt unanticipated, aspects of parkruns non-competitive ethos is the fact that to my knowledge there is no mechanism for dealing with this activity. I know of at least one instance where a runner cut the course at Tymon and whose result still stands. His next-best run is 1 min 14 secs slower. I'm not making an accusation in that specific instance; it could well have been a genuine mistake, but I remember that one, because a teammate was deprived of a 'podium finish' because of it, and it set me wondering whether there was any anecdotal evidence of more of this kind of thing.

davedanon

This week's result from Tymon makes for amusing reading. 9 Bros Pearse athletes in the first 15, including 2nd-5th, and a solitary Tallaght runner in first finisher spot...

edisonolmy

I've seen kids run across the middle of fields they are supposed to go around. I've seen runners only complete 1 instead of 2 laps. If they want to do this, they are only cheating themselves. Now, these are often slower runners, so I don't let it bother me.

I have a faster time at Letterkenny than I should due to accidentally missing a turn in the 2nd of 3 laps. It was only long after I'd been scanned in that I realised what had happened. I asked that the time either be wiped or altered, but was told `don't worry about it'. I'm glad it's not a PB - it'd be annoying to set a PB that you could never beat.

edisonolmy

davedanon wrote: »

This week's result from Tymon makes for amusing reading. 9 Bros Pearse athletes in the first 15, including 2nd-5th, and a solitary Tallaght runner in first finisher spot...

Appears to have been a race-pace training run - good course for it.

davedanon

edisonolmy wrote: »

Appears to have been a race-pace training run - good course for it.

Club singlets and everything!

davedanon

There is a prospect of a little inter-club thing at Tymon in the next few weeks....will keep you posted.

edisonolmy

I don't like seeing club singlets at a parkrun. It's a times run, not a race afterall...

robinph

edisonolmy wrote: »

I don't like seeing club singlets at a parkrun. It's a times run, not a race afterall...

I wore mine for my first parkrun, which was an inaugral for the area. Even then with most of the runners never having done a parkrun before it felt a bit wrong and I'd now mostly not wear it.

That is partially to do with not drawing attention to myself when I happen to be running a parkrun followed by some other race later that weekend or day, but it mostly just makes me feel a bit more chilled out as well. When I put the racing top on it's a serious business and I'm racing, otherwise it's a tshirt and just have a run. There would be occasions when pacing or if the club is doing the volunteering that you'd put on club colours, but mostly not for me.

edisonolmy

Our club would wear t-shirts during pacing events of couch to 5 K graduation runs, just to stand out as volunteers. I've worn a club t-shirt at parkruns when abroad, but no singlet. Those are for races only.

gsi300024v

How much effort will it take to go from 23mins for 5 kms to 20mins or lower?
I play other sports, run not much now but will go back at it, not sun in a month but can run 5kms in 23 mins easy enough.

edisonolmy

You need to train and train hard. I went from 28-plus to 18 mins in about 2 years, but then again I was a fat beast when I started.

We were doing two hard sessions a week - Tuesday hills/temp and Thursday intervals. Parkrun on Saturday and long run on Sunday

The hardest work was getting from 20:30 to sub 20. A lot of speed work was involved. Intervals at faster than 5k pace. Last summer we were going 800 metre repeats every week, shortening our recovery time each week. it saw us go from high 19s to mid 19s to sub 19 in the space of a couple of months.

RayCun

davedanon wrote: »

Club singlets and everything!

yeah, there's a gang that usually do a tempo run in Tymon just after the parkrun, and a bunch of them decided to do the run instead. If there were people there wondering about joining a club - well, now they know which club to join
(Dave was not wearing his singlet - smackdown fail :P )

There is talk of having the two clubs get a bunch of people in to the same run. It would be a bit of fun for those involved and again, might get people to join one or other club