You must be swift as the coursing river (as long as it's the Lazy River) - comments welcome

[avondale]

In which I keep getting "Fly Me to the Moon" stuck in my head

Gee, thanks for that. LOL!

 

[avondale]

I'm leading a small group of students and faculty to the College Park parkrun on Saturday morning. I am familiar with parkruns, but I haven't done one officially. I will print out my barcode, and several folks in the group are getting barcodes.

Do you scan the barcode at the end of the race? Does that mean you essentially have to have it in hand? It's going to be hot, so I'm not sure how I'm going to keep from soaking it in sweat, if that's the case.

What has your experience been?

 

[WillRunForPizza]

You can actually just show it on your phone, so no need to print it out/worry about it getting soggy. They'll hand you a plastic chip when you finish, then they'll take that back a few feet later and scan your barcode. I imagine it gets more complicated at bigger parkruns, but mine has never had more than ~100 people, and they're reasonably spread out by the finish.

 

[avondale]

You can actually just show it on your phone, so no need to print it out/worry about it getting soggy. They'll hand you a plastic chip when you finish, then they'll take that back a few feet later and scan your barcode. I imagine it gets more complicated at bigger parkruns, but mine has never had more than ~100 people, and they're reasonably spread out by the finish.

Hadn't thought about having it on my phone, since their website says to print it out!

My impression is that the College Park one can be pretty busy, and tomorrow is going to be a nice spring day...so I guess we'll see. I'll report back.

 

[avondale]

We had 204 runners at the College Park parkrun, according to their results. Two of the six people in our group didn't bother to sign up and get official results, so that's definitely a lower limit - don't know how many others do that. The College Park parkrun, at least, has a very "everyone is welcome" vibe.

One of the students in our group just blasted into third place with 19:25! His friend (not in our official university group, but other student) was a few minutes slower. This student does at least run regularly and do some races, so he didn't just come out and somehow run that.

I don't understand the token thing. They scan the token and then your barcode. What does the token tell them? It can't be the time, because there's no way the time is connected to the token with the way they are handing them out. I assume the time is just when they actually scan your personal barcode, so if you care about that, you don't want to loiter on it.

The Paint Branch Trail is pretty in the section where they do the run and nice and shady. I'll write more about it on my training blog tomorrow.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Wow, you have some speedy students!

I think the tokens actually are for your time/place. My guess is that whoever is responsible for timing hits a button on an app whenever someone crosses the line, and then it just assigns that time to the next token. I know there are some parkruns in the UK that have hundreds and hundreds of people - I could see several people finishing at almost the same time and then getting out of order even between getting a token and handing it back, so it makes sense to have some way to keep that organized even in such a short space. Usually they do include results for people who don't have barcodes as well; they'll just be listed as unknown.

 

[avondale]

Hmmm...I just didn't feel like they were giving the tokens in any order, but I see what you're saying about somehow assigning the token to a time. Eventually I'll do another one and I'll pay more attention. The students seemed interested in another, so I'll probably do it again in the fall. The Kensington parkrun is within walking/running distance from my house, but I have never gotten around to it. I don't really like running in the morning, so I've never been very motivated for it.

 

[GollyGadget]

Never done a parkrun but the tokens sound similar to how races were handled before chip timing was so prevalent. I vividly remember being handed popsicle sticks only to hand it back over a few yards later. Someone was noting every finish time and then they would tie that to a popsicle stick which would be associated with your bib when you returned your stick (or token in this case).

Today I realized I've been recreationally running for so long that my early race memories make me sound like I'm from the cretaceous

 

[WillRunForPizza]

I just didn't feel like they were giving the tokens in any order

I don't remember for sure, but I think they're numbered? So as long as they put them back in order each week, they can just hand the next token to the next person and they don't really have to think about it.

Never done a parkrun but the tokens sound similar to how races were handled before chip timing was so prevalent. I vividly remember being handed popsicle sticks only to hand it back over a few yards later. Someone was noting every finish time and then they would tie that to a popsicle stick which would be associated with your bib when you returned your stick (or token in this case).

I don't think I've ever seen popsicle sticks! I did run cross-country in high school, but I have no memory of how they tracked everyone's time...

 

[GollyGadget]

Other time tracking methods I remember:
1. Increasingly long & narrow finish chutes that forced athletes to stay in finishing order.
2. Tear away bib sections
3. Ankle bracelets similar to how I imagine house arrest tracking devices. I was always really grossed out by these and very glad they've gone away.
4. Little plastic squares that you'd tie to your laces and have cut off after the finish. This always felt like a special kind of torture. Trying to lift a leg and/or balance on one leg after a really hard effort could be brutal.

 

[avondale]

Other time tracking methods I remember:
1. Increasingly long & narrow finish chutes that forced athletes to stay in finishing order.
2. Tear away bib sections
3. Ankle bracelets similar to how I imagine house arrest tracking devices. I was always really grossed out by these and very glad they've gone away.
4. Little plastic squares that you'd tie to your laces and have cut off after the finish. This always felt like a special kind of torture. Trying to lift a leg and/or balance on one leg after a really hard effort could be brutal.

I've had races with both #2 and #4....#4 was just last year in Utah. I had to explain to the two young men parked near me what to do with them...they had no idea the little squares where the timing chip.

The tokens do have bar codes on them. The tokens were numerous, which makes me think there is no way they were in a specific order or that someone would bother to re-order them for each parkrun. However, the possibility of having the clock time on a scanner, then you scan the token so that it's associated with that time, then you give it to the runner....ok, maybe that's it.

 

[Naomeri]

4. Little plastic squares that you'd tie to your laces and have cut off after the finish. This always felt like a special kind of torture. Trying to lift a leg and/or balance on one leg after a really hard effort could be brutal.

I hate those!