Quote Originally Posted by Witton Park View Post
Just have a look at the results for the Chorley and Horwich Wednesday night races and you will see the numbers are down quite significantly, with them struggling to get to a 100 runners now.
www.race-results.co.uk

These races would have been often over 200 when I started in 2004 / 5 and some of the old timers at our club talk of 300+ in the old days and times of 21 mins for 4 miles only just getting in the top 50!

Clearly there's more issues than just Park Run - but I do think the expanse and regularity of the Park Run events has got to impact on race attendance, particularly the short distance ones such as these.
I did 21.53 for Chorley 4ml back in '91 ,got me 74th place.........back then a big gang of us made the trip over.Now youd be lucky to see anyone from my club there but it aint because of Parkruns,they just don't seem interested.
To be blunt in the 80s and 90s the standard of running was a lot stronger at the top end,some of the guys who were down in the 20s in the results back then would have been winning today.