For what it is though, parkrun operates with relatively few, not uncommonly fewer than 10.
An on-the-day race director/announcer, course marking and on course marshals are generally limited, start/finish infrastructure is limited to some cones and a couple of banner flags. No drink stations or traffic management. There’s always a “tail walker” out there. A couple of people handing out finish place tokens as you cross the line and a couple scanning barcodes. And some magic fairies transfer the scanned results to the event website and generate an email of your result.
Arrive 30 minutes prior to the event and you wouldn’t know you’re in the right place. Packing up literally takes 5 minutes before organisers and regulars are ready to adjourn to a cafe.
This idea that parkrun is a really simple thing to organise each week and takes no more effort than 90mins on a Saturday morning really annoys me, and is really dismissive of the effort that actually goes in to each event. There’s a lot more that goes on each week that goes totally unseen (not least, making sure there are enough volunteers every Saturday - that takes a lot more effort than it should).
Those ‘magic fairies’ that process the results are also a person who often has to spend a long time sorting out issues when people ducked out of the finish funnel without taking a token, two finish tokens were stuck together, or various other things that easily go wrong. For a run director, who’s setting up and processing results it can easily be an entire Saturday morning given up, and then for the event directors the whole process of getting ready for the next week instantly starts again.
that is correct i guess for an race director thats about 5 hour of work in total dependin on some factors but defo no less than 3,5 hours, at the same time some parkruns run differently some had a core team with people that constantly share the race director work and others have different clubs take over.
i have to say overall its one of the best things that has been invented. and i hope long may it last.
I can happily report I found the magic fairies were on top of their game this morning. Parkrun results were up and email notification sent barely an hour after the final finisher.
I’m not dismissive of the efforts people out into event, so there’s no need for anyone to be annoyed. However, I am realistic. The parkrun model is very efficient and streamlined.
I’m volunteering with my masters athletics club tomorrow, which will concurrently stage 15km, 10km and 5km races. The club hosts open road races weekly, free for members, $5 for visitors. It’s not elaborate, but with drink stations, a bit of minor traffic management and more infrastructure, it does require more resources (human, materials, time, etc) than parkrun.
When it comes to staging running events, parkrun is among the simplest to organise. That’s the beauty of it and one of the reasons why format has been demonstrably repeatable in some countries and sustainable on weekly basis.
