Thread resurrection
Just interested to know if those who originally thought parkrun was detrimental are still finding that to be true? Has parkrun taken people away from races or drawn people in?
We don't have fell races down south, but do have trail races on the Downs, locally the situation is that club membership has gone up and races (club, charity and business organised) rarely don't fill the start list.
I'm not saying that this is due to parkrun, it may have happened anyway, but parkrun hasn't stopped people joining / entering.
You can tell there's a race weekend from parkrun webpage because there are more serious runners on the volunteer roster and less in the results, most club runners parkrun when it fits with their races/training and many parkrun joggers enter races, so it works both ways.
I don't see many (if any) 5k races, but I don't know if there ever were many.