Very sadly parkrun have doubled down on their decision to remove the statistics, and now gone further and said that the next step will removal of even more information. Personally I liked all the figures, and if visiting another run I would always look to see how I would do in my age group. Plus it gave me an incentive to try and improve my times.
Such a shame - in case you can read this Parkrun to delete runners' statistics as it prepares to double down in records row (telegraph.co.uk)
Well that's annoying (I got to read enough of the article before the paywall kicked in). It strikes me as a pretty wrong-headed move by Parkrun, in fact the whole thing does. I don't really understand why they think that the existence of the statistics is any kind of impediment to inclusivity. Parkrun is a wonderful thing, but this seems so petty and odd.
Dave E
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day
They’ve completely misread their audience in my view. My kids do the junior Parkrun and as soon as we get home every Sunday I get a constant “Are the results up yet????” Every 5 minutes until they go up!
My wee lad is only 5 and he lives for a new PB and to see where his class mates finished
The mention of "paywall" by Dave is where Parkrun should go. If anyone (like me) wants the figures then pay £1 per week, or whatever. If 100,000 of their 9 million registered runners then want to see the stats, that gives the charity over £5 million a year!
^^ whilst I don't agree completely, I wouldn't begrudge the fee if it meant the results were still there
Like it or not, sport is competitive, and I know parkrun was set up to get people off their ar5e but it can do both
If they get rid of the results completely, that's me done with them, even though I've only really just started. I'm not a great runner but I've steadily improved, and I like seeing how I get on compared to everybody else. If it just becomes an uncompetiitve fun run, well I can do that on any day of the week with one of dozens of local social running groups.