Bring back access to Australian parkrun performance data

Third letter to parkrun UK - the campaign continues!

Wednesday 13th March 2024

Dear Russ Jefferys and the parkrun trustees,

Thank you for your letter last week and we are glad you are aware of the petition. However, your

response does not show that you have read or fully understood any of the points we made in our

letters, despite stating you are listening to our feedback.

You have not given us evidence that the course statistics that you removed were barriers to

participation. In contrast, we have provided you with a range of evidence to show that the course

statistics inspired many in our communities.

Our petitions have over 24,000 signatures – just an indication of the strength of feeling. This is the

largest petition in parkrun history and has attracted a lot of interest in parkrun communities, media

and online. The course statistics did not even get a mention in the article published in BMC Public

Health, entitled “Barriers to initiating and maintaining participation in parkrun” on 13 January 2022.

Anecdotally, from the tens of thousands of comments on social media, press and conversations the

petitioners have had, the support for the change has been negligible – nobody has told us that they

found these statistics off putting. You say that this change is proportionate – to what, and how?

You acknowledge that the change was not communicated properly, but we can reassure you that

the lack of communication has no bearing on our request for the course statistics to be brought

back. There is no misunderstanding or misinformation on our part.

Following the changes, you messaged your staff on 14 February with a document entitled

“Frequently Asked Questions – Changes to the presentation of information on the parkrun

websites”. Only within this internal document do we find any validation of the points we have put to

you in our previous two letters, with the following two questions being the most significant.

• "The statistics motivated many people - how will we re-engage with them/how is this

inclusive for them?"

Your answer only includes what has not changed, and ignores the important point you made

yourself in the question – the removed statistics motivated many people.

• "Can you share more rigour behind the sentiment around not displaying the performance

data prominently and removing functionality to find that information? What evidence does

parkrun have that the removal of the statistics will help achieve strategy and goals?"

You say that ‘feeling too unfit’ is “commonly cited…as a barrier’. Your fact that ‘almost 40%

tell us that one of the key things that appeals to them…is that “it isn’t a race”’ strongly

indicates that there was no need to remove course statistics to make this point. You do not

state or give any evidence that anybody considering parkrun looked at the course statistics

pages, nor were put off by them.

We appreciate that you are working towards a five year strategy of doubling in size. Since the course

statistics were an important motivator for many, their removal will only reduce the growth, by

diluting the attraction of parkrun events. The previous presentation of parkrun results with course

statistics has undoubtedly proved to be an incredible success over the past twenty years and offered

real USPs.

In your open letter about the changes, you say “parkrun only exists to inspire people, from any

background, to come together, to be social, and active, in the great outdoors. That’s it.” This does not

explain why the course statistics would be removed. On the contrary, the course statistics did inspire

people to come together in the way you have described.Please find in the appendix of this letter a small representation of the reasons people submitted as

to why they had signed the petition. It gives a flavour of why these statistics meant so much to

people. There are many more people who feel the same as them, and the full list is available by

request or by viewing them directly on the petition page, if you would also wish to read them all.

You have also ignored our suggestion to hold a fair online vote of parkrunners and volunteers on this

issue. There are other solutions, like an ‘opt in’ link to view detailed data. Leave the default results as

they are now, but offer participants the option of accessing the detailed data if they wish to do so.

Could this be something that would achieve your goals and allow the statistics to be reinstated?

We strongly believe that the number of people negatively affected by this change monumentally

outweighs the number of people that would benefit from it. Without any significant and genuine

justification to show otherwise, we continue to request that you return our course statistics. Listen

to your community and bring back the stats.

Respectfully submitted,

(8 signatories)

Letter sent to parkrun UK yesterday

                                                                                                Monday 4th March 2024

Dear parkrun central team, Russ Jefferys and board of trustees,

We sent you an open letter on the 20th February where we asked you to reinstate the record stats and leaderboard lists such as the first male and female finishers, the fastest 500, most events table (and locations) and all the age graded records for approximately 2,500 parkruns and junior parkruns. You have not yet acknowledged or responded to our letter. These course statistics provided inspiration and motivation to many, in addition to being both interesting and fun. They were part of the character of each local parkrun. People of all ages and genders were proud of records they achieved, either at the top of a leaderboard or at the bottom, because of the hard work they put into their running and the sense of achievement it gave them. To keep these statistics is to be inclusive to all runners. We again say that we strongly believe that these statistics and lists were not off-putting to potential new or less-confident runners. In reality, new runners are very unlikely to be aware of these lists and records.

An article published in BMC Public Health, an open-access journal, entitled “Barriers to initiating and maintaining participation in parkrun” on 13 Jan 2022 concluded that the main barriers  were the start time being inconvenient, feeling too unfit, injury/illness, no time and childcare obligations. The course stats that were removed at the beginning of February were not a barrier at all.  There are many other aspects of parkrun that new runners are likely to be anxious about – we were all new once and remember these concerns! They might worry about the fact that there is a results page for each parkrun with times and runners ranked from fastest to slowest. The fact that people watch them run. That they might be one of the slower runners or look foolish. Whether they can even make it round the whole distance. We are adamant that lists like an age-graded league, a fastest 500 or a list of first finishers did not deter them, like they did not deter us on our parkrun journey.

What’s next? We would again like to call parkrun to reinstate the stats. Alternatively, we would like to call on parkrun to run a vote of parkrunners and volunteers worldwide on this issue, to assess how many people valued these statistics. We, the petitioners, would trust parkrun, as a community NPO in the public eye, to run a fair and transparent online voting process for all parkrunners. Call a month long period for users to cast their vote the same way unions currently do. Voters could be asked to provide their barcode or use an email system as a unique identifier, so only registered parkrunners can vote and can only vote once. The specifics of how this vote would be undertaken to ensure fair representation for all members of our community would be up to parkrun. The results would provide the evidence and justification to inform a decision on the course statistics for everybody.

What’s in it for parkrun? There has been much media coverage and social media discussion of the removal of these statistics. Many commenters across different outlets and platforms have felt that parkrun removed these statistics and records without warning or consultation in an unfair way. Others feel that despite the claim that “there is no hidden agenda”, removing the stats was a way of avoiding the issues regarding fairness for women in sport and the rights of transgender runners. Even more have commented that they feel parkrun HQ are not listening to the parkrun community and are instead making decisions based on their own agendas and pushing those decisions down. We don’t want parkrun to suffer reputational damage. We love parkrun. Between us, the petitioners have ran and volunteered at countless parkruns and embraced the ethos and spirit. We want the parkrun central team to continue to nurture the parkrun movement on its amazing journey. We support the expansion of parkrun and look forward to being part of what comes next. What the parkrun community needs now is for you to show strong leadership in resolving this issue and bringing our whole community back together. Either reinstate the statistics or organise a fair vote to provide evidence of what your community want. Let’s accurately find the percentage of people who valued the course stats, how many are indifferent, and how many found them off putting and support their removal. We would respect the results, and we urge you to embrace them too. Show us that you listen and care about everyone in our community, and their views are valued and respected.

If you decide to reinstate the stats, we would be delighted to see even more records, stats or even friendly competitions in the future, if these are popular features. Such stats can be based on very many achievements beyond the performance records, to celebrate so many other achievements in our community of volunteers and runners. The best leaders listen to everyone in their community and create an organisation that best serves their needs. We want to work with you, to ensure parkrun is a community that supports and motivates everyone. Please don’t try to ignore this, and the subsequent damage that will cause. 23,000 have now signed one of the two petitions; we are not a handful. We are runners, walkers, volunteers and event directors around the world, slow, fast and in between. We are a significant number of united voices from our parkrun community that deserve to be heard and respected. We look forward to your response.

Respectfully submitted,

Will Hartley, Woking parkrun, England; Mary Taylor, Author of the Bring Back the Stats petition; Mark Purvis, Author of the Bring Back Access to Australian parkrun performance data petition; Jérôme Benhadj, East Coast parkrun, Singapore; Claire Stevens, Druridge Bay parkrun, England; Kamil Wolosewicz, Warszawa-Ursynow parkrun, Poland; Janice Whittle, North Lakes parkrun, Australia; Alexander Smotrov, Wormwood Scrubs parkrun, England; Celèste Booysen, Durbanville parkrun, South Africa; And 23,058 more parkrunners and volunteers from around the world.

parkrun responds to my correspondence (well, sort of)

parkrun has at last answered me. Here's the nonsensical reply I received:

"Good Afternoon Mark
 
Thank you for your feedback which has been passed on to the board of parkrun Asia Pacific and the Global parkrun Senior Leadership team.
 
Hopefully having seen the results tables/results email over the past few weeks, most people will have noted that little has changed.
 
You may have also seen the open letter from our CEO, Russ Jefferys, which might go some way to helping understand our position. If not, you can see this here: https://www.parkrun.com/blog/news/2024/02/14/an-open-letter-from-russ-jefferys-ceo-parkrun-global/
 
Thanks for taking the time to provide your thoughts.
 
Kind Regards
Renee

parkrun email addresses

My apologies, two of the email addresses in my last announcement were wrong. Please direct your correspondence to renee.gimbert@parkrun.com  renee.russell@parkrun.com and glen.turner@parkrun.com

Thanks,

Mark

Time for alternative action

Dear parkrunners,

A week ago I wrote a polite letter to three important people at parkrun Asia Pacific. None of them have been polite enough to acknowledge or respond to my letter, which was written on behalf of the 1,100 signatories to this petition. So they haven't just ignored me, they have ignored you as well. Therefore I am calling on as many of you as possible to take direct action and fill up the inboxes of these people with your thoughts on this matter, and urge them to do something about it!!! Please send emails to these addresses: renee.gimbert@parkrun.com.au (Managing Director), renee.russell@parkrun.com.au (Head of Event Delivery) and glen.turner@parkrun.com (Communications and Health & Wellbeing Manager).

Perhaps they are prepared to ignore one email, but let's see if they ignore another 1,000+ to their personal addresses.

Regards and thanks for your support,

Mark Purvis

Letter to parkrun global sent yesterday

-Tuesday 20th February 2024 -

Dear Parkrun central team, Russ Jefferys and board of trustees,

Thank you for your letter on Wednesday last week where you explained your reasons for

removing the record stats and leaderboard lists such as the first male and female finishers,

the fastest 500, and all the age graded records for each local parkrun and junior parkrun

event.

We appreciate the goal of making parkrun inclusive for everyone and that you believe these

records have the potential to put off new participants.

However, we have continued to promote the petitions to bring back the stats, because we

firmly believe the majority of parkrunners want the stats back, and we do not believe these

records are stopping people from wanting to join.

• We believe these records and lists are motivational, inspirational and show personal

achievement. Many loved the stats.

• Many runners around the world found these lists fun and interesting.

• People of all ages viewed these records. Kids were really proud of both junior and 5k

parkrun age records. Older runners loved seeing where they fared in age-graded tables

and worked to improve in their local parkrun’s standings, or take on other records as a

tourist elsewhere.

• We do not believe removing these tables makes parkrun more inclusive. Parkrun had

been wonderfully inclusive for twenty years, both welcoming and friendly with these

records in place. Although we can empathise that beginners or slower runners may find

parkrun a challenge, it is not the stats that make it so. We do not believe removing

records, lists and age-grading tables will impact their likelihood to participate in any

meaningful way and they are not a barrier.

• Having a competitive element of parkrun for those who want it has always been part of

parkrun since its first four years as Bushy Park Time Trial, as you said in your letter.

Parkrun can be different things for different people, whether you are slow or fast.

Allowing people to engage with it in a way that suits them made it inclusive. In reality,

removing the stats leaves the runners that valued and used the records feeling excluded.

These changes were done without consultation or warning without offering any alternative

incentives for parkrun participants and go against the spirit of the global community event

that parkrun is. We would be happy to work with parkrun to find a mutually acceptable

solution, such as enabling runners to continue to access course statistics but in a less

prominent way.

Many of our petition contributors have also put ideas forward that we would be happy to

share, such as increasing the presence of other stats that celebrate volunteering and

tourism, to display in addition to the course stats.

Our two petitions now have over 18,500 signatures of ordinary parkrunners and

volunteers around the world who would like the stats back. Slow, fast, in between, old,

young, middle aged. We all want them back. Please listen to what we are calling for and

bring back the stats!

Respectfully submitted, 

Will Hartley, Woking parkrun, England

Mary Taylor, Author of the Bring Back the Stats petition

Mark Purvis, Author of the Bring Back Access to Australian parkrun

performance data petition

Jérôme Benhadj, East Coast parkrun, Singapore

Claire Stevens, Druridge Bay parkrun, England

Kamil Wolosewicz, Warszawa-Ursynow parkrun, Poland

Janice Whittle, North Lakes parkrun, Australia

Alexander Smotrov, Wormwood Scrubs parkrun, England

Celèste Booysen, Durbanville parkrun, South Africa

And 18,691 more parkrunners and volunteers from around the

world.

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