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Dec 2017
10:30pm, 4 Dec 2017
3,371 posts
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57.5 Degrees of Pain
Warning, statgeekery ahead! And apologies to p_m_j. Nothing personal, the incorrect use of visual representations of statistics is one of my great bugbears.
I'm afraid that using a one year spread in a graph to argue year on year numbers is almost a classic fail. Two years would be a minimum, three much better. Add a trend line to make sense of the variable numbers from week to week and you would probably have a fair visual representation. What this does show nicely is that parkrunners are like my mileage through the year. Very keen in January, a wobble in bad weather but strong through the spring. Start to get lazy in summer and spend the rest of the year building back gradually.
It is a fair point though, as DtH Daisy says, parkrun is in most of the populated bits of the country and adding numbers from now will inevitably be a different kind of process (getting into more remote communities and adding events to take pressure off others will grow parkrun, but not as fast). It will be fascinating to see when it does peak.
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Dec 2017
10:35pm, 4 Dec 2017
4 posts
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furytingar
I have it on very good authority that the proposed Bakewell parkrun will start on December 30th.
Watch this space!
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Dec 2017
10:39pm, 4 Dec 2017
3,373 posts
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57.5 Degrees of Pain
But will there be tarts?
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Dec 2017
10:49pm, 4 Dec 2017
14,879 posts
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Dvorak
Thanks Charlie  Now let me see ...
November 14 2015: 102 466
November 12 2016: 124 801
November 11 2017: 192 891
After a period of modest growth, parkrun has gone through the roof with over 50% growth year on year!
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Dec 2017
7:44am, 5 Dec 2017
125 posts
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philip_m_jones
Ok, so I'll add more years:
The chart is for all parkruns worldwide and there is a clear pattern (as others have observed). People make New Years' resolutions so you get a peak at the start of the year, then they drop out and you have a few cold months. Spring kicks in and numbers climb but then school holidays kill that for a while. End of summer, autumn and we are back to growth and you hit a peak somewhere later October to mid-November before the cold cuts in and the cycle begins again.
This year, there has not been that peak in the second half of the year. For 2 weeks at the end of April, start of May, over 200k worldwide and that total was close at the end of October and start of November but not exceeded.
Yes, 57.5 Degrees of Pain is partly right about stats but not totally. Something has happened this year which is markedly different to the last years for parkrun. These are global numbers, so over 1,000 parkruns and the UK is less than half those by number of parkruns. Maybe it just shows the influence of other countries which smooth out the very UK-centric pattern (6-weeks school holidays from End of July to early September).
Below the same data for the full period of parkrun, 13 week moving average, See the New Year peak and then the secondary peak afterwards, not this year!
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Dec 2017
7:57am, 5 Dec 2017
17,170 posts
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Wriggling Snake
As far as I can tell Parkrun has two particular limitations. Physically parks that can and will hold a parkrun and more impotantly a quorum or core team to run one in a more remote area.
Marple. My local. South Manchester has 8 close by. It has been going for nealy 5 years. Last week just over 100 turned up...it is kept alive by the local running club.
I remember helping out at Swindon when it set up. Took months for it to hit 100. Almost a year. Now more like 350 per run but there are few parkruns nearby. Density of parkruns is a factor.
Parkruns are running clubs by another name. Core team or committee. Volunteers and stalwarts. People who come and go. You could do worse and measure the rise and spread of running clubs. Parkrun will follow the same pattern.
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Dec 2017
9:23am, 5 Dec 2017
17,395 posts
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Steady Edina
WS I think the profile of the course also has a lot to do with it as well. A tougher course does not seem to attract as many people. South Manchester owes some of its popularity as it is relatively flat
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Dec 2017
12:51pm, 5 Dec 2017
18,784 posts
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fetcheveryone
That looks hilly, Philip
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Dec 2017
1:01pm, 5 Dec 2017
14,883 posts
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Dvorak
It still looks like it is showing a lot of growth to me, however you slice it.
UK parkruns are approximately 45% of parkruns, but have around 65% of parkrunners. UK and Ireland stats will therefore skew trends, however it is something to note that significant amounts of parkrunners are in the Southern Hemisphere so or winters are their summers. Then again, a lot of these places are much warmer, so winter is more conducive to running.
(And perhaps all of this would be more at home in the general parkrun thread, rather than the inaugurals one?)
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Dec 2017
3:28pm, 5 Dec 2017
52 posts
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Spideog
I don't see the secondary peak of the year missing for 2017, I see the peak of the first half of the year being unusually big.
Were resolutions an unusually big issue thing year? Was the weather mild world wide in the first half of the year? Did South Africa have an unusual number of new events start up?
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