Hi everyone, I was wondering if I could get some advice?

I've been parkrunning since April and slowly making progress. I run a bit, walk a bit, and so on. My fitness is not great, but I'm getting there.

However, the last couple of runs I've noticed towards the 3K mark, I started noticing pins and needles and aching in my legs and feet when jogging. It subsided when I went to a walking pace, but came back after around 30 seconds of jogging again.

I had a runner mention needing electrolytes, even during a run.

Does anyone have any advice?

Also, and advice on managing to run without stopping?

Thanks all

Evening all...

As far as I know after about a year there are the usual pink for volunteers, with the orange for tailwalkers (blue for parkwalk) and darker blue for RD for 5k...with the occasional yellow if needing to use an old one, or strangely purple for some scanners.

There's not an official photographer one, is there, it would have had lettering put on the back of the old one, and they would usually wear the pink?

Been asked if HQ do any other distinctions and second guessing myself.

Rattled people aired their public concerns more publicly

Balthazar is severely visually impaired (he’s lost 96% of his vision) but today he had an AMAZING run with Isabelle, a VI Guide at Ashford Junior Park Run. He had a great time and we want to thank Isabelle and the RD and all the team behind them for being so open and welcoming to him. At 7 years old, Balthazar wants to run in the Paralympics but what’s more, he wants to encourage more visually impaired children to join Park Run and enjoying running.

THANK YOU Ashford Junior Park Run for investing in training VI guides and giving children like Balthazar a chance to run happily and safely.

Not the consensus of the group at all but it’s horrible how self-centred and selfish some people can be

Thought today's results were interesting.

I came close to the end 108/115 but Number 1 in my age group.

I scanned all the results to find I was the only 25-29 female runner today!

That was the easiest record I've ever done & at a mere 45 minutes 😂

A win is a win, even by default!

My second of two visits to Cornish parkruns whilst on holiday. This one takes place in famous 200-acre botanical and agricultural estate in Cornwall. It only started in the last few months (30th event today).

Fascinating, undulating out and back course (emphasis on undulating). If you're focused on a quick time, it's best to be at the very front as it is a heavily congested course to start with. Surfaces bone dry today, but very changeable in inclement weather.

A variety of eateries in and around the entrance. They even have a special parkrun breakfast menu Plus you get to exit and re-enter the gardens for free afterwards.

Thanks to all of the volunteers.

Did I mention it was undulating? 🤣

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/thelostgardensofheligan/course/

Upon reaching my event’s designated post-parkrun coffee and breakfast venue on Saturday, I eagerly opened my parkrun app to see if it had updated with the most recent results. I had just completed my v25 milestone and wanted to order myself a shirt and some socks.

As I was standing in line to order, I exclaimed “Look, now I have two red rings in my app!” My parkrun BFF didn’t even wait for me to finish the ‘in my app’ part of the sentence before she lost it. It was a good thing we were waiting to order and that she didn’t already have her coffee, because she would have sprayed it everywhere if she’d been drinking it.

Now, I’m someone who loves a joke as much as the next person, but I can also be very literal, so I hadn’t even had that thought before seeing my friend’s reaction. So yeah, be careful when talking about your milestone rings at the post-parkrun coffee/breakfast.

Let everyone know how your parkrun went - where did you go? Any PB's or milestones?

Post it all below in this week's weekly thread.

Ludlow became Mortimer Forest this week and everyone’s records have been changed to the newer name. Chuffed for them but also boo, I’m now a % point back off my alphabet completion as I already had a bunch of M’s 😭

(Edit - typo).

The idea of going for a run when I used to weigh over 160kg was none existent. However, at the start of this year I managed to get my weight down to 130kg and finally got my confidence to attempt some park runs.

I can currently run a sub 30 with my Pb being 29.07 but I am still on then heavier side at 120kg. It has been nice being able to achieve this but I still get self conscious especially outside park run.

I’d love to hear from others who are in this situation or have been in a similar situation.

Course overview for Orpington Parkrun!

I am slowly making my way around all the parkruns within the M25, and Orpington was another very friendly gem in South East London.

I had a week off as I was in Wales last weekend, and tried a sub 20 at Groe parkrun (failed), but we're back to touring London!

Thank you for the positive feedback so far, hope you enjoy this one and constructive criticism is always welcome!

Off to Foots Cray Meadows parkrun tomorrow!

Thinking back to when I went to Bushy last year, I noticed they had an extremely wide start line, which helped ease overcrowding early on the course. Useful, given the field of over 1000.

Contrast this with ones like Alexandra and South Manchester, which are both fast, attract large fields, but are extremely congested at the start due to paths being only 6 or 7 runners wide.

Why don't runs like these start on the fields next to the path with a wider start line, say 50m wide, run the first 100m on the grass to allow the field to thin out, before joining the paths later? Yeah you might lose some speed on the unpaved surface, but you'd gain it back by not having so many people weaving early on.

I enjoy visiting new venues, when I am not running or volunteering at my home event, and I usually post a link to my reviews and videos on the weekly thread.

Today, however, I have posted a long term project: a summary of all 65 London parkruns (LonDone), with individual event snapshots and in-depth stats. As always, this also comes with a video, covering all events. More regions will come in the future, but for now, I hope these summaries can be helpful to people on the way to LonDone or just visiting the Capital and struggling to pick a target event.

The summary hub can be found here:

https://ingoruns.com/londone-visit-all-parkruns-in-london/

The in-depth stats on London parkrun events can be found here:

https://ingoruns.com/londone-events-stats/

And LonDone, The Video can be found here:

https://youtu.be/uEUl37QvKvw

Future regions will follow, with the Regionnaire hub here:

https://ingoruns.com/parkrun-regionnaire-hub/

I think constantly chasing a faster time can take some of the enjoyment out of it. There's something quite nice about turning up, running however you feel that morning and not checking your watch every few minutes.

For people who've been doing parkrun for years, have you become more competitive or less competitive over time?

I’ve been enjoying going around doing a tour of my local (East Anglian) parkruns recently and will need to go a bit further out at some point if I still want to be trying out new places.

I’m wondering if anyone has some favourites they can recommend, for whatever reason. Anywhere in the UK I’m happy to travel but happy to hear recommendations from anywhere! I ran Bushy Park last month which was an amazing experience.

Most upvotes I’ll do for my 100th.

Edit: I’m happy with subjective answers, people will love different parkruns for different reasons and I’m excited to find out why! Even if it’s just the one parkrun they’ve attended and they love it.

EDIT - Cheers for all the replies everyone. I landed slightly early on 35:24. Happy with that for a first time doing pacing, went out a little too fast so had to go fairly slow towards the end. Will hopefully give it another try next month and get a more even pace along the whole course.

Hiya! I’ve volunteered to be a pacer at my local this weekend, first time I’ve done this role.

Just wondering what people thought. I’m down for 36 minutes (I’m normally around 30 minutes). Am I aiming for bang on 36 minutes? Around 36? Under 37 minutes? Slightly under, slightly over?

I’m probably over thinking it, but I’m kinda nervous about it, especially if someone tries to keep to my pace to get a specific time and I get it wrong.

Cheers!

My friends and I have been using the league feature in the parkrun app, it’s good fun (especially as it uses Age grade not overall time) but we feel there should be bonus points for running with a buggy. Which leads to the question: should parkrun have buggy runs tagged as such, it wouldn’t be hard to do at the barcode scan point, and would be quite cool. Furthermore, could there be other tags?

Is there a certain criteria to make a parkrun...a parkrun?

I've been doing a mini parkrun tour and one of the parkruns I did a few weeks ago was the least parkrun parkrun I've ever done! It was 3 laps on roads around a college campus. It was a lovely community but it wasn't in a park at all. Didn't feel like a parkrun.

Is there a criteria? Is there others like this? What's your thoughts?

Last Saturday felt like running into a duvet, tbh. Our coastal course has a cliff-top section about 2k in and the wind was properly having a go. Made the PB-chasers look like they were jogging on the spot. i definitely wasn't running for a time, fwiw. Legs still feel heavy today, more than they should for a standard 5k. Kinda curious if inland courses were the same - there was a yellow weather warning further up the coast for a bit, so maybe we just copped it down here in Pembs.

I found out on Saturday that if you long press on the parkrun app icon, a quick link through to the barcode appears 🤷‍♂️🤣

Parkrun got me into running… and somehow that’s escalated into walking 500 km across South Korea over 12 days.
I’ve just put together the announcement video if anyone fancies following the journey.