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Jan 2019
12:29pm, 2 Jan 2019
25,128 posts
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LazyDaisy
Fair enough Dvorak. I expect there are as many shades of opinion on this as there are parkrunners 
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Jan 2019
12:30pm, 2 Jan 2019
6,604 posts
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Too Much Water
I’ve done different parkruns when in different areas (visiting friends, going to weddings etc).
The idea of driving 100 miles to purely run a different parkrun from last week and with no other purpose makes me think of stamp collectors, Trekkies, other nerds. I’m not really bothered about the ecological impact as it must be minimal considering the total amount of global emissions but I do feel sorry for people if their only method of validation is to add another unique parkrun to their tally
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Jan 2019
12:33pm, 2 Jan 2019
3,013 posts
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Fizz :-)
I like to think we have the balance just right, out of 36 runs in 2018 we did 27 at Corby and nine elsewhere
(adding one to the many shades )
We did the NYDD for the first time, at Huntingdon and Pocket, and didn't particularly enjoy it, apart from the meeting Fetchies bit, too busy and too rushed for our liking.
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Jan 2019
12:35pm, 2 Jan 2019
20,749 posts
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Wriggling Snake
There was a guy at my club last year who ran 26 different parkruns each starting with a different letter of the alphabet. I asked him to explain to me how much more difficult was it to run 26 different 5ks, as compared to 26 5ks at the same parkrun.
his explanation was about hotels, car journeys, planning, so I said, can you explain to me home much more difficult it was to run 26 different 5ks, as compared to 26 5ks at the same parkrun.
he looked at me as if I were mad.
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Jan 2019
12:40pm, 2 Jan 2019
365 posts
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Akie
Yeah its the arbitrary reasons for doing parkruns very far from you I dont understand (collecting letters, wilson index whatever that is etc). Ive done quite a lot of different parkruns but nearly all have been around Manchester so see it as extension of getting to know my city.
The risk with the NYDDs is that the huge numbers put more RDs off from running an event that day so youre left with even less events to cope with the huge demand. As there's clearly a decent sized group of parkrunners who will run regardless of how far they need to travel.
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Jan 2019
12:53pm, 2 Jan 2019
24,874 posts
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HellsBells
We often struggle to get a full volunteer team out each Saturday - the thought of trying to drum up enough volunteers for our usual Saturday's, plus one or two extra runs on ?Christmas Day and/or New Year at the same time as trying to organise a family Christmas and a bit of down time is, frankly, enough to make me leave the core team altogether.
I notice from our regulars that the people moaning loudest that we weren't putting on any extra runs were the same group who have never volunteered.
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Jan 2019
12:54pm, 2 Jan 2019
13,822 posts
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Bazoaxe
Could you post up a volunteer rota and say if its filled, we will put on a Race, if not we wont ?
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Jan 2019
1:01pm, 2 Jan 2019
799 posts
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edison
We had 644 yesterday - 2nd highest ever in NI - behind our event from Jan 1 last year. it was pretty chaotic at times. We hoped another nearby event being on would mean lower numbers, but they got 400 as well.
Bigger numbers means more can and will go wrong, so I spent this morning simply deleting emails from people wondering why their time was slightly different from their Garmin, rather than telling them to `do one'.
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Jan 2019
1:01pm, 2 Jan 2019
18,223 posts
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DeeGee
Cleethorpes is an interesting case study. In Cleethorpes, since pretty much time immemorial, the local running club has organised a good value, well supported, fun and accessible 10k race on New Year's day. As a result, I have always said that we will never put on a parkrun on NYD. The first couple of years, this was more rhetoric than anything else, but to be honest, the 10k course passes by every vehicle entrance to our park and it would be wrong to have 'my' runners crossing the course on the way home. This year there were road closures as well, so this has become moot.
The original intention was to not take support away from the 10k which is the biggest fundraiser in the club's calendar.
There was a decent Cleethorpes parkrun contingent at the 10k, but probably as many went away to do either the Hull and Scunthorpe doubles. When you factor in petrol and tolls, that probably doesn't come in much cheaper than the NYD10k, and is exactly the same amount of running. So it's not the running per se that people want, but the parkrun.
I've done a bit of tourism, 18 different events now. Most of them have been the Saturday morning of a weekend where I've gone away to run a longer event elsewhere (Newcastle, Paris, London) or events in Kent when I'm visiting my parents with my son, and he doesn't like wet mud and likes to go and see different places - so last weekend didn't do our favourite event at Shorne Woods and instead we ran Folkestone, for instance.
Of course, now I've done 9 events in Kent, the 'collector' in me wants to collect the rest as well. And then I start running parkruns because they are there, rather than running them because I am there.
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Jan 2019
1:04pm, 2 Jan 2019
800 posts
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edison
"We often struggle to get a full volunteer team out each Saturday". We filled Dec 25 and Jan 1 easily, but folk forgot about the Saturday events.
I won't ever appeal or beg or put up silly memes on social media asking for volunteers. Folk know the deal by now. If we have enough, we go ahead, if we don't, I'll still go ahead but without timekeepers.
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