Parkran

On Saturday, October 2, 2004, thirteen runners at Bushy Park in London gathered for a friendly run. The volunteers and judges were Duncan Gaskell, Simon Hedger and Robin Drummond, as well as Joanne and Paul Sinton-Hewitt; the latter is considered the founder of the idea of ​​parkrans. Participants liked the idea, and races on Saturdays began to be held regularly. The Bushy Park Run was named UK Time Trials and then renamed Bushy Parkrun . Two years later, similar races began to be held in other parks in the UK ^[2] .

In 2018, 323 new parking screens were launched. On April 14, a race was launched in Malaysia . The number of participants exceeded 5 million people.

In 2019, the launch of the park crane in Japan took place.

Today (02/02/2019) parkrun runs are held in twenty-one countries in the world.

In Zimbabwe and Iceland, parcranes are no longer held.

In April 2013, an article by Vlad Nebolsin on parkran in London appeared on newrunners.ru. The article collected a lot of responses, and on April 20, 2013 on the Sparrow Hills the first race of the same format took place. In parallel, the initiative group began negotiations with parkrun headquarters in London, but the British did not allow the use of the name parkrun in Russia. Saturday races were called "Park races", the initiative group has developed its own system of electronic registration of participants, timing and barcode scanning. Park races began to take place in several Moscow parks - Kolomenskoye , Northern Tushino , Botanical Garden , Kuzminki .

About a year later, an English delegation led by Paul Sinton-Hewitt visited Moscow and, based on the results, decided to include Russia in the parkrun community. The first races in the new format took place on March 1, 2014 in Northern Tushino and Kolomenskoye.

The transfer of existing Park races to the parkrun system meant a transition to a unified system of registration of participants and results, that is, any participant registered in Russia can participate in any foreign parks with saving the results to their profile, and vice versa.

Currently (02.08.2019) there are 64 parkrun runs in 37 cities in Russia ^[5] .

The first parkran in Poland was organized on October 15, 2011 in Gdynia ; Only 5 runners took part in it ^{[6] [7]} .

A record race took place in Poznan on the occasion of the anniversary of the uprising in Greater Poland ; 1110 people took part in it ^[8] , and 1077 people were classified ^[9] .

On August 2, 2019, a parkran in Poland is held in 68 places ^[10] .

In Poland, they are managed by the parkrun Poland fund.

Parkrun races are organized by the runners themselves, so the service functions alternately fall on (volunteers) .

Volunteers ^[11]

• The race director is the general management of the race, decisions on changing the route due to weather and other conditions, and the organization of volunteers.
• Stopwatch (Timekeeper) - fixing the time of all who finished.
• Marshals (Marshals) - mark the track, guide those running along the correct route in difficult areas (turns, intersections), warn of dangers (ice and the like).
• Issue of Finish Tokens.
• Scanner (Barcode Scanners).
• Photographer.

Technology

The timekeeping system works as follows:

1. Each participant must register, receive an identifier, print the generated barcode and bring it to the race. Registration takes place once; the created account is global, with this barcode you can participate in races around the world.
2. Participants finish time is detected by a stopwatch.
3. Each finishing participant is immediately issued with a “token” card with a barcode containing the serial number of the finisher.
4. After some time, the participant should contact one of the volunteers and scan the received “token” and personal card with a barcode.
5. Data from the stopwatch (serial numbers of the finishers and the time of the finishes) and data from the scanner (serial numbers of the finishers and personal identifiers of the participants) are downloaded to the central database and combined . The result of the download is the finish protocol - a summary table containing the place and time for each of the participants.

The data stored in the system can be viewed in several sections - for example, the protocol of a specific race, the profile of the athlete with all his personal results, general statistics on the race or country, and so on.

Despite the fact that parkrun is not a competition, the timing system registers personal as well as national and global records.

Parkrun races encourage frequent races. If a runner finishes in parkrun 50, 100, 250 or 500 races, he will automatically become a member of the club 50 club, 100 club, etc. For participating as a volunteer in 25 races, the participant is accepted to the club 25 volunteer club. Children under the age of 17 who have run 10 races become members of the “10 club”. After entering the club, the runner is given a T-shirt of a certain color with the inscription 10, 50, 100, 250 or 500 on the back.

As of August 2, 2019, parkrun statistics have 6,356 runners in the 250 Club and 65 runners in the 500 Club.

The maximum number of participants in one parkrun was registered in South Africa on January 20, 2018. 2527 sports enthusiasts took part in the race at North Beach parkrun. ^[12]

The largest number of parkran on 08/02/2019 ran Darren WOOD - 731. ^[13]

The largest number of unique parkrans on 02/02/2019 ran Paul FREYNE - 478 ^[14] . It is noteworthy that Paul ran his 400th run in Russia in the Kuzminki parkran in the Kuzminsky forest park in Moscow.

• www.parkrun.com - a global site for parkran
• www.parkrun.ru - the official website of the park crane in Russia