New parkrun partnership

Many jogscotland members will already be familiar with parkrun, the free, weekly timed 5K that takes place all over the country on Saturday mornings. Their simple idea has taken the running world by storm, and has enabled lots of us to enjoy tracking our progress. All you do is register online, print off a barcode, and get it scanned at the end of the run, then all your times are available on the parkrun website.

Here at jogscotland we’ve always been big fans of parkrun, so we’re delighted to announce that we are working on a new partnership with them that we hope will bring the best of their simple – but powerful – technology to our jog sessions.

Together, we have developed a prototype app for mobile phones that can be downloaded by Jog Leaders, and we will be running a pilot to test it over the next few months.

The app will allow Jog Leaders to create jog sessions (location, distance and time) and scan barcodes of participating joggers. This can then be uploaded to a website to display number of runs, distance covered, run duration etc.

Joggers will be able to see an online record of all their jogscotland and parkrun activities. Leaders will have a record of all sessions that they have led, and who attended.

Jog Leaders will be able to scan existing parkrun barcodes, and it will also be possible to download your barcode to your phone.

The app has been designed to be simple and practical to use, and if our trials are successful, training will be included in the Jog Leader course, with support also available to existing Jog Leaders.

We’ve got plenty of testing to do, but we hope this system will provide great new opportunities for members to track their jogging journey, and help Jog Leaders manage their groups.

It will give us a great picture of what our members are up to, so we can deliver appropriate help. It will also help us inform our funders, sponsors and partners of the activities that they support, which is crucial for future funding. The idea is endorsed by sportscotland, who are providing R&D funding.

We’ll pilot the system with a few jog groups in March and April, before a wider trial over summer with volunteer groups across the country.

Founder of parkrun Paul Sinton-Hewitt, said: “As one of parkrun’s largest clubs, we are delighted to be working with jogscotland to assist the organisation in their wish to provide better recording of the impact they are making on health and wellbeing. jogscotland and parkrun are complementary organisations with shared values and objectives and by working together we will provide better results for those involved.”