parkrun, lap two

py wrote: »

Incredible amount of positivity on FWT podcast this week. They have a plan and it sounds reasonable given where England are with regards to vaccinations. A lot of emotion shown by Tom. I initially thought there was an audio issue but he was welling up.

I had already heard that he'd got emotional during it, but still caught me out on listening to it. Knew that was the question that would set him off and I still thought there was a problem with my podcast player app.

opus wrote: »

Thought they said originally that only a full parkrun territory would return so it would all of GB rather than just England? Not that I've anything against parkrun resuming once it's safe to do so of course. Imagine they will be plenty of cross border tourism from Wales & Scotland if they their parkruns are still on hiatus.

Will be interesting here if NI resumes while ROI is still closed down.

They did originally say that, and that juniors would return at the same time as well or possibly after 5km had returned. That thinking changed back around the time New Zealand first restarted, if not before then.

I don't think there is much problem with England returning before Wales and Scotland, there might be if Wales returned before England though. The only cross border mass traffic on relatively small events the other side I think would be from Bristol to two small events that are visible from there but on the Welsh side, other way around and Bristol has loads of events compared to the potential touring parkrunner numbers. Possibly similar issues up Cheshire direction too, but the distances between population and parkrun event on the Scottish border are too big to make it much of a problem. Not many people will do a 3hr + drive to run a parkrun, some will but not many.

I would anticipate that Wales and Scotland will end up with very similar dates for the relaxation of restrictions, and parkrun isn't even returning at the first point when they could. If Scotland relaxed restrictions a month after England then events could restart in both places at the same time.

NI and Ireland is a different matter and might be they do need to be synchronised.

Update on the milestone tshirts:

https://blog.parkrun.com/uk/2021/03/17/changes-to-milestone-t-shirts/

Will be a £15 charge per tshirt from 1st September, but the same price globally and includes delivery. Also they are adding some extra milestones with volunteer 50,100, 250, 500 and run 25.

You'll also be able to buy additional replacement tops for if the top gets damaged, or you need a different size.

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

Unfortunately not always in the right direction. My 100 shirt is fairly tight these days

I think they just sent you a kids size by mistake... And then it shrank in the wash.

Yay, finally have a start date for our local junior parkrun on 9th May.

Was some confusion with the restart as the event team thought everything was in place, the landowners had given permission, they had got their people to email back to parkrun HQ that it was good to return and the coffee shop had stocked up with extra cakes a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of lots of excited juniors and happy parents turning up... Then massed confusion from the landowners when nobody showed.

Seems their email outbox hadn't synced up right and the email never actually got sent back to parkrun HQ. Guess the constant messaging from parkrun HQ to UK event teams to check their comms is right and little mistakes can mess things up.

Seems there is also now a start date for at least one junior event in Wales to begin in a couple of weeks too so things are moving along outside of just England. I'm also hearing positive noise regarding another parkrun territory being close to getting permission, but nothing officially confirmed yet.

Now confirmed for the first parkrun event in Wales to restart as well on the 9th. It was the event I suspected, which is also going to be an inaugural as their initial start date I think was meant for the first or second week of lockdown one. The are in a lucky position geographically, stuck between two motorways on some old industrial scrub land, but it's actually a really pleasant course and you'd only barely know where you were. They are also not anywhere that people have heard of and kind of tricky to find so should be safe from massive influx of people.

Despite that though I dare not say their name, or even mention that I know of an inaugural on the UK based social media, for fear of people noticing.

It's a lovely group hosting the event and their previous 5km course which had to move 100m and be renamed, was the venue for my buggy PB.

If you're curious, it's called Rogiet, that is the correct spelling, it's not French and it's not said how you think.

...and now a bunch of events across England have been confirmed as having permission to restart from 5th June, which includes a few of the ones near me. Yay!

No guarantee that 5th June will be the date yet as would need a higher percentage to get the go ahead across England. Just 2 out of the 5'ish (depending on where you draw the line for how far people might travel) in my city have the green light so far and they are the 2 smallest events so might be an issue with numbers. But they are also the two events that people are least likey to travel to because mud/ hills/ mud & hills. But a great response after just 24 hours since permission was even asked for.

Great sign that people are confident with the parkrun framework document and the vaccination/ case rates that they will give permissions so quickly.

Totally awesome to see the kids back this morning. Was a last minute panic for the marshals as the kit had all disappeared since last week, which was then found in another store room, which was then found to be locked and nobody knew who had the key... But they gained entry somehow and things were back on.

Was a bit of nervousness beforehand about how many people would turn up, how many dog walkers there would be as they would no longer be used to the juniors being there each week. Few more marshals than normal, probably a relatively normal number of participants, but it looked less as they were all smaller ones than previous with the new temporary age range.

We had a couple of new parkrunners attending as our kids school friends joined and all went running off into the distance delighted with themselves* and some very proud parents and kids at the end, and very happy marshals just glad to be out marshaling again.



* Less said about my own junior parkrunners participation the better, but they did one lap of the two then screamed at me for 40 minutes while sat in a muddy puddle about not having got a finish token and how the world wasn't fair. A Calipo eventually enabled us to leave after further negotiations.

Was having a glance at that map a few minutes ago myself. Can certainly see some clusters of areas with loads of parkruns and no permissions yet... But I know of at least two in my small neck of the woods which have got permission since that map was last updated, one of which hasn't yet been tweeted about with a humorous gif by HQ either. So there must be quite a number more waiting in the wings for official announcements... Hopefully.