parkrun, lap two

Tubbercurry Trail is on the map.

https://www.parkrun.ie/tubbercurrytrail/

Basically chat to the other walkers around you, if they want to chat. Try to encourage everyone, especially slower walkers and first timers. A little encouragement goes a long way to motivate people. Most importantly, show everyone that you are enjoying walking with them and that they are welcome at parkrun. Fair play to you for helping out, enjoy it

parkrun results are a manual process where lots of things can go wrong. The time keepers may have miss-pressed, the finish tokens may have had a few in the wrong order or be missing, someone may have ducked out of the funnel after being timed, someone may have crossed the finish line twice. There are so many things that could cause the results to go awry in a manual system. If you are concerned about your time, a polite message to the event team explaining the issue, preferably with a Garmin time etc., and an offer to volunteer in future may persuade them to correct your time. But it is important to remember that all of the timekeepers etc are volunteers, mistakes happen and there is no guarantee of getting a time or of the accuracy of that time .

Normally two timekeepers, who occasionally check in with each other and whoever is handing out the tokens, that "next token is 59" timekeepers should be showing 58 and token confirms 59. In a bunch finish, one finisher extra or less may have been recorded, finisher number should always be one less than the next token, so one timekeeper may add a finisher even though no one crossed the line to keep everything in sync. If a finisher doesn't want a token (you get them) their token should be dropped on the ground. Only one timekeepers results are used, so maybe you got a token that should have been dropped or there may have been an extra finisher needed by one timekeeper to keep sync'ed and that was you 'place'.

I've done timekeeper by myself and in a bunch finish, touching your phone screen 7 or 8 times very quickly can mean errors.

Every day's a school day, did not know that, thanks.

Because at the end of the day, the majority of people don't really care about the statistics. They don't really care what the course record is at their local parkrun. All they care about is their own stats. But I feel it is unfair to those who do hold course records, age grade records, first finishes etc. It might be important to them, they worked hard for them and to me the removal of them almost feels like parkrun is scolding them - it's not a race !!

Ciara Mageen getting the female parkrun record at the end of last year was great for parkrun. It made so many headlines outside of parkrun circles. It surely would have been inspiring for other runners, particularly female teenager. I ran the same parkrun as Sonia O'Sullivan once and it felt great to be running the same event as a pure legend, someone I watched on tv growing up, and yet she was a parkrunner like all the rest of us, listening to the briefing, queuing to get her her barcode scanned.

In terms of barriers to entry to parkrun - what I've noticed lately is that newbies to my local parkrun are friends / acquaintances of a participant. With parkrun wanting to increase numbers - perhaps people should be encouraged to bring someone along with them. And people are more likely to continue going to parkrun for the social aspect.

Re the Ciara Mageann thing, I'm not really sure that it does anything for Parkrun in terms of increasing participation. It might even have the opposite effect of scaring off potential participants who perceive themselves as slow. A world class athlete showing up to hammer a PR at a Parkrun seems a bit pointless to me, if anything. I think it's lovely to see elites showing up at and supporting their local Parkrun but making a big deal out of a professional athlete running a fast time at a Parkrun always struck me as a bit odd.

Achill off again this weekend and I gather the local St Patricks parade in the area is postponed until Easter. Something odd going on out there.

In brighter news, Tubbercurry Trail gets going this weekend.

A lovely course, mix of forest trails and open bog land. All on decent paths so trail runners not really needed. 180 probably too many for the course, particularly at the start, but numbers will settle over the next few weeks. Locals, walkers and first timers were well represented.The team coped very well though and were very welcoming. Good to see lots of marshals around the course . A great addition to the parkrun community.

The fact that person also is in the 250 Volunteer club makes 500 more impressive.

Will the weather warning mean many getting cancelled I wonder, there seems to be a few gone already

They're falling like skittles at the moment.

For any parkrun in an orange warning zone it's probably best to check their website before travelling in the morning.