Central Park Plymouth. Not quite a 90 minute drive from home, but it’s in Devon and we Cornwallians harbour deep suspicions of goings on across the Tamar. Something to do with jam. Plenty of local on street parking and probably even a real carpark near the start. Start is easy to find, just keep going uphill. It’s beside a café which surprise surprise was open, and toilets. Plus points. The café has some additional covered outdoor seating which is a handy place to leave kit.About 500 parkrunners. We had a pleasantly brief briefing (obvs shortened by not needing to recount the course records any more) and off we trot. Mostly wide tarmac paths - handy since we start with a there and back, so two way traffic. Down the hill and off to the mini-Stinger, a narrow uphill section. Mostly single file to leave room for the buggies, dog-people and the faster fitter runners. A bit of wending on a two way section to another 180 degree turn (strangely without a marshal) and homeward bound (almost). Uphill, past the start/finish and then duplicate the first section. So far so good. Now I’m a plodder, I aim for 30 minutes ish. When I got to the finish (333rd) we had to queue up to have our times taken. I was stationary with maybe 20 people ahead of me to be timed. Problem seemed to be that the funnel was full. OK, it wasn’t my greatest performance but adding on an extra 20 seconds was not kind. When my wife got there a few minutes later the blockage had cleared. It was so the Devon jam!Apart from that, a worthwhile experience. I can recommend the full english at Windy Corner at the other side of the Tamar on the way home.

This app has so many useful features. My only reservation was the event number challenges and they’ve mostly been removed now: I have made a donation to thank you for that decision.I just have two wee quibbles. One is that the p index doesn’t count volunteering in the way other challenges do. The other is that the price quoted on the membership fee doesn’t include VAT so it goes up on the payment page. The difference is small but it’s not really how things are done in the U.K. The price advertised should be the total price you pay.That apart the app is superb. I love being able to find my friends’ barcodes if they’ve forgotten theirs. I love that volunteering can (optionally) count towards most challenges - please fix the p index though. I love the feature that gives the total day’s attendance with volunteering and running combined. As an ED I can get people’s volunteer history (for Duke of Edinburgh for example) faster and more accurately than from the website or webfms.But what I love most of all is the way the app supports the true ethos of parkrun - promoting volunteering, removing the small number of challenges that cause problems for event teams - rather than feeding the egos of a small number of extreme challenge chasers. This is an app that genuinely supports parkrun where some others think parkrun exists to support their app. Excellent job, keep it up.

If there was a “no stars” option you’d be getting it. Having switched to another phone and uploaded the app I am now without a barcode. I have entered into the most Kafkaesque of situations where, even though I’m registered, my name doesn’t come up on the list and it says to add your barcode you need your name or barcode. It asks you to sign in but there’s nowhere to sign in. I went to the website dnd to sign in you need your ID which, it turns out, is in your email. But nowhere does it say where your ID can be found. I had to Google it. I’m beyond frustrated. I stood at the finish and it took four people trying different ways to find my name and barcode. One of them managed it eventually but had no idea how they did it when asked afterwards because the process she had gone through was so convoluted. Why can THEY find my name and barcode and I can’t? It’s crazy. It’s really good job that Parkrun attracts so many very friendly people who are prepared to help others out because this app is a bloody nightmare . So today can be summed up with Q: “How many people does it take to find and use a barcode?” A: “6. 4 trying their damnedest, one runner standing apologetically to one side and another waiting a bit awkwardly to zap it”

I’ve downloaded 3 different apps that allow you to track your performance at parkrun events. Each have their merits, and all work better on an iphone than the official parkrun app, which appears to crash all the time.This one is by far and away the most beautifully laid out, easy to use, and full of helpful information. I especially like being able to plan future parkruns as part of my new parkrun tourism obsession. The challenges are all easy to track too, and the map that shows ‘Nearest parkrun not done yet’ is also a great tool, as are options to look up all parkruns in your country starting with a particular letter.All in all this is an excellent app, and it’s incredible that it’s free. I’d be happy to make a one-off payment, although I’m less keen to sign up to a recurring payment through Patreon.All kudos to the developer who has created a first class app, much appreciated and widely used by - I’m guessing - hundreds or thousands of runners. Well done and many thanks.