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.

www.change.org/bringbackthestats 

www.petitiononline.uk/bring_back_access_to_australian_parkrun_performance_data

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.