‘The last person at parkrun’

It’s one of the things about parkrun but you’re never last - that’s the job the “tail walker“, a volunteer who stays at the back of the field right from the start and should be the last person to cross the finish line. 

Ensuring that all participants are accounted for, one of the attractions of tail walking is that - unlike most volunteer roles - volunteers can get both a volunteer credit, and have their time recorded as a participant if they bring their barcode.

In the early days, they were known as tail runners but, as parkrun has grown, with the greater emphasis on parkrun’s inclusivity and more people walking most or all of the course, including the Tail Runners, anyway, the name of the role was changed a few years ago. 

This was about a bit more than simply semantics; it also helped to reaffirm and reiterate the message that everyone is welcome at parkrun, including the increasing numbers who were already walking, that the “fear of coming last” and being ridiculed, - common for many first time participants in sporting events and dating in many cases from schooldays, was totally unjustified at parkrun!

Since then, we’ll over 200000 people have been tail walkers, and the number of walks at parkrun has grown fro a couple of thousand 10 years ago, to the best part of 200,000 now.

In South Africa, getting on for a third of parkrun participants walk the course.

parkrun today was really windy! The dreaded west wind along the prom was blowing hard. Perhaps because of that, there were rather fewer participants than usual and certainly fewer slower runners today. 

The first half of the course was really easy and I thought I was flying, only to be hit in the face by a strong wind and even stronger stride stopping gusts, on the return leg of the out and back course. As a result, I was even nearer to the end of the field than I usually am!.

Elaine, today’s tail walker, usually walks herself (though very fast!), but still comes in some way ahead of the tail walker. Today she admitted to me that she actually had to run a large part of the way!