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I did a local half a few years ago and saw a very large chap walking to the start line. He must have been well over 20 stones. I next saw him a couple of hours after I had finished, been to get changed, had dinner with Mrs Dill and the Dill kids, and was walking back to my car. He was soldiering on to the finish line. I viewed him as being heroic, a fantastic achievement, who if I had been volunteering, would have been happy to wait as long as it took for him to finish.
But I also see people at parkrun, ambling along to finish in well over an hour, not even breaking their chit chat as they cross the line, oblivious to the volunteers, no acknowledgement for the finish tokens or barcode scanners.
I guess i expect people to put in a little bit of effort. If they make some effort no matter how slow they are, I support them. Just find it hard to support people who really are just wandering along, slower then the pace they would walk around Tesco.
I must admit I am a lot more tolerant of those towards the back of the field on running events since I took up swimming. I swim much slower than everyone else so always have to check cut off times before I enter. Yes I have trained a lot, taken lessons and I am trying my best! I do always make a point of thanking all marshals, safety crew, organisers etc for waiting for me.
I tried walking at our local parkrun. In theory park*walk*ing is to be encouraged.
My hypo-mobile stride is much shorter than most adults so struggled to 'keep up with' the tailwalker. His wife, who is older than me, walks faster than I can run (when I *can* run) has a stride that is almost twice the length of mine, and holds the age-record for our event. I asked him to slow down a bit.
At a very brisk - for me - walk (legs hurt afterwards), I can finish in around an hour. Not everyone who is slow is lazy, and I'm often in the company of people who are putting a fair amount of effort into being the slow-coaches at the back.
For parkrun I think that's quite acceptable, but I don't deliberately walking is fair on the marshals at events that are put on by running clubs and billed as races.
However, if I could run (can't at the moment) I'd enter because running slowly is still running...
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May 2025