In some ways it’s really easy to define parkrun tourism – running a parkrun other than your home event. In some ways it’s a bit more complicated, and (sadly) divisive, than that.
There are several types of tourism:
- While on holiday, looking up and attending a nearby event.
- Attending a neighbouring event because they’re doing something special or your home one is cancelled.
- Travelling further for no other reason than to attend a different event.
- Planning an entire trip away to attend a different event.
It’s pretty safe to call ourselves tourists – completing 25 different events when you live in the heart of the South West region and have a toddler is not something that happens by accident. With a short-term goal for the year of making the Most Events table (20 events) and a long-term goal of becoming South West regionnaires (completing the whole region), 2016 saw us shift up a gear in our tourism efforts.
Making a day of it
So what does being a parkun tourist mean for us?
Early starts
We’re fortunate that during the week our alarm is set for 6:45. We’ve (just) managed to make it to our home parkrun getting up at 8:25. For some of our tourism trips the alarm has been set for 6:00, and even then it’s been a push to get out the house on time to allow for toilet stops en-route (because, toddler and pregnant woman).
Barcode paranoia
The golden rule of parkrun: don’t forget your barcode. And if you’ve travelled specifically to tick off another event it would kind of suck to not get a result. We have the plastic barcode tags, and keep one stored in as many running kit pockets as we can (they go through the wash, it’s brilliant). Even still, we check that we’ve got them approximately every 5 minutes while getting ready to leave. And for trips away barcodes are second on our packing list (a friendly local might print a barcode for us at a push, they can’t print a toddler’s much-loved toy).
Variety
Choosing different events to attend means getting to experience a variety of courses. While I enjoy Longrun Meadow (particularly with puddles), it’s sometimes nice to run a fast tarmac course, or completely off-road. To see countryside or the sea. Or even get some hills in. Every event is different.
Getting to know the locals
Spending more time together
Saturday mornings at the end of a long week can be wash-out zones, and it’s easy to spend the time relaxing separately. Travelling for parkrun changes that. For starters, there’s the entire journey there and back where there’s nothing to do but (gasp) talk to each other and compare thoughts on radio features. But, strangely, with parkrun then taking up most of the morning we’re also more likely to visit a playpark or head to a cafe together as well.
A massive community
A common accusation pointed at parkrun tourists is that we have missed one of the main points of parkrun: community-building. For me it couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, I have gained a lot from my home parkrun’s community and really appreciate seeing familiar faces any time I’m there. But travelling around makes you realise quite how big the parkrun community is, and you get to meet new people to share your mutual love of parkrun with. Whether it’s talking to volunteers, meeting up with fellow tourists, or just chatting to the person you happen to run next to, it really doesn’t matter which parkrun you’re at.
As for those types of tourism I mentioned, perhaps unsurprisingly we’ve done all 4. We haven’t gone to the extreme of flying somewhere just to visit a different event. Yet. There’s still time.