Parkrun - My thoughts on the removal of stats

I wrote this article for the Bring Back the Stats! Facebook group. To reach a wider audience, I would also like to share it via my Blog page.

Since reading the report of the meeting attended by Will Hartley, Mary Taylor and Alexander Smotrov, I've been mulling over the comments made by Paul Sinton-Hewitt (parkrun founder) and Russ Jeffreys (parkrun CEO), and come up with these thoughts, which I would like to share in this forum.

Until the removal of the stats, I felt that parkrun was very successful at being all things to all people.

If you wanted to run fast, you were allowed to run fast.

If you wanted to race your friends, you were welcome to race your friends.

If you wanted a steady social run with your child, you could enjoy a steady social run with your child.

And if you wanted to walk round the course and take 50 minutes, then you could walk round the course in 50 minutes, and it was no problem if it took you 55 minutes.

All these categories of parkrunners turned up and enjoyed the same event and the same special atmosphere that the event organisers created.

Parkrun has also been successful in attracting a cross-section of society, certainly in terms of age range, and although there has been a weighting towards the fitter end of the spectrum and the so-called ABC1 socio-economic groups, there has been a reasonable take-up from the less fit and C2DE groups.

When I’m running in the middle of the pack, I absolutely love the fact that there is someone incredibly fit, maybe even an Olympian, out at the front, and a not-so-fit person at the back who is there to gain some valuable exercise, enjoy some good company and share their Saturday morning with a great group of people.

Everyone is there for their own personal reasons, and as parkrunners we all respect that and want to see everyone else enjoying themselves. Parkrun has created a remarkable feeling of community, but the attitude of “this is our playground” and “we make our decisions from the top-down” puts all that is so special about parkrun at great risk. I’m absolutely appalled and dismayed by the way parkrun HQ is treating its most devoted supporters.

The point that I really want to make here is about the business model aspect of this debate.

At the moment, parkrun has two products, parkrun and junior parkrun.

Parkrun now wants to reach more people from the less active end of the fitness spectrum and more people from the C2DE socio-economic groups. These are admirable objectives for a charity, but:

·         It appears that parkrun HQ is not concerned about upsetting its existing supporters in pursuing these objectives, and that is a worrying attitude for a charity to take.

·         Parkrun HQ seems to regard statistics on the website as the biggest barrier to participation from these groups, despite many parkrunners, myself included, disagreeing with that belief.

·         Parkrun HQ seems to believe that the existing product, a five-kilometre run on a Saturday morning, is the best way to attract this new target audience.

It’s that final bullet point that I want to explore in a bit more depth. What evidence does parkrun HQ have that their current main product is likely to attract that new audience they wish to engage with?

Then the next question, has parkrun HQ considered any other alternative products or methods for attracting that new target audience? If they are trying to attract an audience that is more likely to walk than run, then is a product called ‘parkrun’ going to work for them?

I’m raising these questions because I believe that parkrun is right to address the issue of physical inactivity and offer a product that encourages some of the least active in society to participate in a form of healthy outdoor exercise, but taking your current product, with some statistics deleted, isn’t the most imaginative way of planning for a major piece of business diversification.

A two-kilometre walk on a Sunday afternoon, with a title like ‘parkwalk’, might have a better chance of drawing in a new audience, whilst retaining the existing parkrun audience on a Saturday morning. That said, I think it should be recognised that there are already many organisations and individuals working in this space (Ramblers, Paths for All, amongst many others) and been striving for many years to address these issues, so my advice to parkrun HQ would be to consider other options and to work alongside these other bodies, rather than crashing around and acting as if they are the only game in town.

Another line of thought is that their new target audience might not be interested in an event at a set time. The best way of getting harder to reach communities involved in more physical activity can be to provide facilities rather than events. Build paths close to where people live, and they will take exercise seven days a week. It’s just a piece of lateral thinking but putting the effort into creating paths might be more effective than bending parkrun to attract an audience that isn’t interested in running five kilometres on a Saturday morning.

If parkrun really wants to diversify and benefit new audiences, then I think something separate from parkrun and junior parkrun is required. In that way, I think parkrun, as we knew it until a few weeks ago, can continue being all things to all people, and a new, third offering could attract a new target audience and be all things to the people that are attracted to it.

Here’s an appropriate phrase to end on. “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Parkrun HQ would benefit from a few new tools. A bit of imagination and a willingness to listen to some bottom-up thinking wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Bring Back the stats home-made T-shirt