So who are Parkrun?

I wasn't remotely interested until the recent débâcle.

I don’t need to rehearse the origins of the débâcle. Parkrun has hidden/removed everybody’s records, apparently to be “less offputting”.

Parkrun aren’t admitting that this decision is connected in any way with a campaign by female runners to pressure the organisation to drop its policy of “gender self ID”, which has allowed men to take women’s records in the event.

The magnificent Mara Yamauchi, two-time Olympian and the UK's second fastest female marathon runner of all time, has become the unofficial face of the campaign to make Parkrun fair for women. Here she is at Cannon Hill in South Birmingham, where she was first female finisher.

You’d think Cannon Hill Parkrun would have been thrilled to be hosting an Olympian, but they were the absolute opposite - so utterly unthrilled that they instructed the event photographer to delete all the photos of her and the other runners in Save Women’s Sport shirts.

They didn’t of course admit to deleting the photos. They said on their Facebook page that the photographer didn’t get any photos of Mara, which we know isn’t true.

So who exactly are Parkrun?

They are a charity.

They have lots of money.

And they employ 49 people, of whom 11 are paid £60k or more, including one person who trousers between £120k and £130k per year.

He who trousers the big wedge is presumably this He/Him.

Oh look! They’ve got a “DE&I lead”. A She/Her who’s “passionate about feminism”, of course, but not that nasty feminism that insists that women have a right to their own stuff, because that’s not diverse, equitable and inclusive, is it?

They’ve got a heavyweight board of trustees.

Including a good sprinkling of pronouneers. Of course the CEO of an organisation called Women in Transport would be someone who isn’t 100% sure what a woman is!

Very intriguing to find out that the Chief Exec of British Gymnastics is a She/Her.

I’m irresistibly reminded of the Big Train gymnastics sketch.

I’m going to stop now, because I’m depressing myself. Parkrun is a bloated zombie feasting on our society’s inability to get itself out for a walk at the weekend. Its employees are a gang of simpering, pronouneering grievance gerbils, led by a grotesquely overpaid stooge who cannot believe his luck. And despite its apparently seriously well-qualified trustees, it appears to completely lack any kind of proper governance or oversight.

Cath sums it up perfectly. Women are blamed for everything.

Personally, I hope that Parkrun disintegrates and everybody remembers that if they want to go out for a walk or a jog or a run on Saturday, then they are perfectly at liberty to do so.