Parkrun..

Duzzie · 22-04-2020 07:25AM

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

I was meant to be running Mountjoy this week

I feel your pain. I was due to run Mountjoy on 15th March, the first week of the suspension. Was really looking forward to it too. Hopefully when it restarts, the list will restart were it left off.

average_runner · 02-05-2020 09:05AM

People in Griffeen Park this morning for the park run. Happy birthday on the pathway and 60 number balloon.

Do these people not realise no groups of any sizes even with social distancing is not allowed?

Pawwed Rig · 02-05-2020 09:57AM

Duzzie wrote: »

I feel your pain. I was due to run Mountjoy on 15th March, the first week of the suspension. Was really looking forward to it too. Hopefully when it restarts, the list will restart were it left off.

I got an email from them saying that they have permission to have extra people attend when it (eventually) restarts so they will deal with the backlog that way.

robinph · 02-05-2020 10:19AM

average_runner wrote: »

People in Griffeen Park this morning for the park run. Happy birthday on the pathway and 60 number balloon.

Do these people not realise no groups of any sizes even with social distancing is not allowed?

Might be worth a quiet message to their social media team, if they are not on here already, reminding them to send out the posts about not turning up in any parkrun location at 9:30am on Saturdays.

The last thing parkrun needs is any bad press about it being parkrunners who are breaking any lockdown rules.

Seannew1 · 02-05-2020 02:53PM

Am I correct in interpreting parkrun falling under phase 3 of the easing of lockdown restrictions??!

average_runner · 02-05-2020 03:57PM

Seannew1 wrote: »

Am I correct in interpreting parkrun falling under phase 3 of the easing of lockdown restrictions??!

Would say phase 5. Pitches open in phase 4 but social distancing

The Black Oil · 04-05-2020 02:43PM

I'm not sure how it could return with social distancing. My first thought was the welfare of the volunteers.

robinph · 04-05-2020 02:54PM

The Black Oil wrote: »

I'm not sure how it could return with social distancing. My first thought was the welfare of the volunteers.

There is really no need for any volunteers to be within 2 meters of any parkrunners except for token handing out and scanning. And token handing out can be done without any contact and takes all of a second to do, scanning can also be done without any contact and takes only a second or two longer.

The main issues are people milling around and chatting in a confined space at the start and then going to crowded coffee shops afterwards.

The social distancing message will gradually change over the next while and become more specific to different situations.

average_runner · 04-05-2020 03:07PM

Come August social distancing will be limited. Cant keep telling kids they cant play or can't hug grand parents, it's not good for their mental health.

My little one is outside with her friend, keeping 2 metres apart if not more and its breaking my heart to see it.

robinph · 04-05-2020 03:12PM

average_runner wrote: »

Come August social distancing will be limited. Cant keep telling kids they cant play or can't hug grand parents, it's not good for their mental health.

My little one is outside with her friend, keeping 2 metres apart if not more and its breaking my heart to see it.

Mine is refusing to leave the house at the moment.

They are not particularly active anyway, but we had just about managed to get them interested in doing junior parkruns and now lost all that and gone even further backwards.

Did momentarily get them dancing infront of the xbox earlier, but they quickly got frustrated that it wasn't recognising them waving their bum at the screen as a valid command to play the next song.

DeepBlue · 05-05-2020 06:23PM

https://blog.parkrun.com/za/2020/05/05/covid-19-coronavirus-update-5-may/

Thirdly, in most countries we operate in it is likely to be several months before we consider it appropriate to reopen our events. By then, the world’s understanding of this virus will be very different, as will society’s feelings about it.

Hmmm... it looks like the return of parkrun is many months away.

Seannew1 · 05-05-2020 06:33PM

The really damning sentence is this one, I feel!!!

"Also, at this time, we are not considering starting events where doing so would mean participants or volunteers are required to maintain a certain distance between each other."

Could be out for at least a year by looks of it!!

Sunny Dayz · 06-05-2020 02:55PM

DeepBlue wrote: »

https://blog.parkrun.com/za/2020/05/05/covid-19-coronavirus-update-5-may/

Hmmm... it looks like the return of parkrun is many months away.

Each paragraph seemed to be saying the same thing, just worded differently!
I got an undercurrent of "parkrun's not coming back anytime soon so stop asking about it!"

robinph · 06-05-2020 03:05PM

There was also a change from the sense I got of previous messages where they talked about a country potentially being able to restart with a week or so's notice of restrictions being lifted by the local government. Now seems more like they aren't going to restart anywhere until several months after restrictions lifted. They don't seem to want to be used as a test case for what happens when 100 people gather in a park and would rather a football stadium takes that publicity hit with 20,000 people instead.

average_runner · 06-05-2020 04:02PM

robinph wrote: »

There was also a change from the sense I got of previous messages where they talked about a country potentially being able to restart with a week or so's notice of restrictions being lifted by the local government. Now seems more like they aren't going to restart anywhere until several months after restrictions lifted. They don't seem to want to be used as a test case for what happens when 100 people gather in a park and would rather a football stadium takes that publicity hit with 20,000 people instead.

Can understand that

Seannew1 · 06-05-2020 08:14PM

robinph wrote: »

There was also a change from the sense I got of previous messages where they talked about a country potentially being able to restart with a week or so's notice of restrictions being lifted by the local government. Now seems more like they aren't going to restart anywhere until several months after restrictions lifted. They don't seem to want to be used as a test case for what happens when 100 people gather in a park and would rather a football stadium takes that publicity hit with 20,000 people instead.

Yeah exactly. Although I don't see any reason for a country like New Zealand not to start up again in the Summer time considering that they had very few deaths and cases of the virus, whereas, the UK, have been hit really badly by the virus and most of the people behind the scenes at parkrun are UK based hence the rather downbeat status from them yesterday.

robinph · 07-05-2020 07:06AM

Seannew1 wrote: »

Yeah exactly. Although I don't see any reason for a country like New Zealand to start up again in the Summer time considering that they had very few deaths and cases of the virus, whereas, the UK, have been hit really badly by the virus and most of the people behind the scenes at parkrun are UK based hence the rather downbeat status from them yesterday.

New Zealand is the perfect place to restart. They have the numbers way down, only one point of entry to the country for international travel (other than from Australia) very easy compared to other countries to control any new cases coming in. And from parkruns perspective there is no chance of Ryanair flights of UK tourists heading over to claim a Z for their alphabet challenges.

Assuming the numbers remain low/ zero and sport in general starts to return in NZ I'd be very disappointed if they don't restart there soon just because they want Bushy Park in London to restart as well before they can be bothered to turn the server back on at HQ.

Cape Clear · 12-05-2020 03:39PM

Seannew1 wrote: »

The really damning sentence is this one, I feel!!!

"Also, at this time, we are not considering starting events where doing so would mean participants or volunteers are required to maintain a certain distance between each other."

Could be out for at least a year by looks of it!!

Maybe as an organisation they are more grounded in reality than most professional sports bodies.

Pawwed Rig · 12-05-2020 04:39PM

If they got rid of timing and scanning it might be feasible to bring it back quicker.
Or have self scanning with a fixed always on unit or a chip system to get times and participation numbers (which probably would be a non starter due to cost).

robinph · 12-05-2020 07:39PM

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

If they got rid of timing and scanning it might be feasible to bring it back quicker.
Or have self scanning with a fixed always on unit or a chip system to get times and participation numbers (which probably would be a non starter due to cost).

I don't see how the timing or scanning are the risky points about parkrun?

It's the mingling around in a big group for 10 minutes before the briefing, the all standing even closer together for the 5 minutes of the briefing, the 30 seconds climbing on top of each other before the start and the hour sat around in the coffee shop chatting indoors afterwards.

keane2097 · 12-05-2020 08:02PM

If you are handing a token to a sweaty, panting person there is a good chance you are going to get some droplets from them onto yourself, your mask, your gloves, the rest of the tokens etc. Let's just imagine they are COVID positive.

The next sweaty panting person comes along, gets a token with some fluid on it, hands it in to be scanned and then wipes their mouth. How is that not risky?

robinph · 12-05-2020 08:05PM

keane2097 wrote: »

If you are handing a token to a sweaty, panting person there is a good chance you are going to get some droplets from them onto yourself, your mask, your gloves, the rest of the tokens etc. Let's just imagine they are COVID positive.

The next sweaty panting person comes along, gets a token with some fluid on it, hands it in to be scanned and then wipes their mouth. How is that not risky?

All of the token interaction can be done with no physical contact between people, and sweat is not a risk for transmission of the virus.

keane2097 · 12-05-2020 08:20PM

robinph wrote: »

All of the token interaction can be done with no physical contact between people, and sweat is not a risk for transmission of the virus.

If my upper lip is sweaty while I'm bursting myself on a 5k I often unconsciously wipe my mouth. I don't even realise I've done it, now there's sweat mingled with saliva on my hand and who knows what the difference between them is.

200 people running around fairly narrow paths all at different paces, wiping their mouths, panting, eventually having to interact with tokens other people will also have to interact with.

I'm fairly unconvinced that anything about it could be low risk to be honest.

robinph · 12-05-2020 08:30PM

keane2097 wrote: »

I'm fairly unconvinced that anything about it could be low risk to be honest.

Token hander outer drops the token in your hand, they do it like this at Bushy London anyway as its quicker than handing them over.

Then you hold the token for the scanners and then drop them in a bucket.

Not ideal, but the interaction is minimal and no more than a second or two. It's the duration that people are hanging around each other socialising that's the problem.

Gael23 · 13-05-2020 05:26AM

I can see how smaller events can get going in a few months but larger ones like Marlay for example,e are a different story.

Burkie1203 · 13-05-2020 05:57AM

robinph wrote: »

Token hander outer drops the token in your hand, they do it like this at Bushy London anyway as its quicker than handing them over.

Then you hold the token for the scanners and then drop them in a bucket.

Not ideal, but the interaction is minimal and no more than a second or two. It's the duration that people are hanging around each other socialising that's the problem.

The days of parkrun being timed by token and scanner are over. A new solution has to be found now.

robinph · 13-05-2020 06:22AM

Burkie1203 wrote: »

The days of parkrun being timed by token and scanner are over. A new solution has to be found now.

The problem there being if the cost of participating is any more than needing to head to the library to register and print out a barcode it then cuts off part of the main target audience for parkrun.

Requiring chip timing, a phone or any technology by the participants, or needing to provide more technology to 2500+ events isn't something they have the money to provide.

TaurenDruid · 13-05-2020 09:44AM

robinph wrote: »

The problem there being if the cost of participating is any more than needing to head to the library to register and print out a barcode it then cuts off part of the main target audience for parkrun.

Requiring chip timing, a phone or any technology by the participants, or needing to provide more technology to 2500+ events isn't something they have the money to provide.

Could see parkrun going the opposite way, too. "Free. Weekly. Untimed. No pressure." At least initially. It'd match the ambition of reaching a wider audience and seeing average 5k times go up rather than come down.

Seannew1 · 13-05-2020 10:06AM

I am sure Parkrun HQ have considered all possibilities in conjunction with health authorities. Again, the biggest problem is the start line as I have maintained all along. Unless you sent you runners one by one, whereby they would forfeit their time. There is an interesting article by Professor Kingston Mills today in the Irish Times and he says that runners are extremely low risk. He also has a 2.13 marathon which I was very impressed with :pac::pac:

Pawwed Rig · 13-05-2020 10:17AM

It might be worth dispensing with timing for a while and send people out separately. It is the bigger parkruns with 100+ that are the main issue.

Parkrun..

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