Park Run Glasgow
August 7th, 2009Short article by Bob Marshall on the Park Run series held in Glasgow. Looks like an interesting concept and he certianly enjoyed the experience.
I was looking for a “sharpener” race before doing the Scottish vets 10k road race champs in mid August, and I thought that the Glasgow Parkrun 5k on Saturday might be appropriate. So, off I went at the crack of dawn for a 9:30 start on Sat. morning.
To do detailed justice to how it is organised it’s best go to www.parkrun.com and then choose Glasgow Parkrun (there are quite a number of them run every Saturday morning throughout the UK). Herewith I’ll try to capture the main features.
I cannot speak highly enough of the event and its organisation, it was fantastic.
It’s held in Pollok Park, easily accessed from the motorway and with plenty of parking. It starts and finishes at the museum housing the Burrell collection, so there’s even an opportunity to indulge in a little culture (or just visit the cafe like wot I did).
The whole concept is that it costs nothing to enter, there are no prizes, it’s you against the clock and it’s run every Saturday morning at 09:30. So, if you choose to run more that one then you can make meaningful comparisons based upon your performances. To take part you register on line (once only) with your name, date of birth, club, and back up identifier in case of duplication of name. Once registered you merely turn up and run. That’s it….you can take part in as many as you wish, and should you choose run any event in the country.
The reporting of the final results are a statistician’s dream. Your position and time are recorded, also your time is age and gender graded so you can even compare your performance (in percentage terms) against the front (younger) runners. And you can even look up to see how you have done in your specific age group.
By 12:30 (well before I got home) my performance had been e-mailed to me, as well as every other Gala Harrier (had there been any). By Sunday morning full results (about 250 people) were posted on the net. Their computer system even sent me birthday greetings on my birthday last week!! How cool is that!!
I’ll certainly be going up again and would be only too happy to take a Gala group up with me. Obviously it is a bit of a trek up to Glasgow, but I hear that there are moves afoot to introduce the concept to Edinburgh.
Regards
Bob Marshall
