Double bubble

It has been a while since I wrote (harped on) about the parkrun doubling effect, so now must be about time.

On a few occasions in the past on this blog I have written about how parkrun seems to roughly double in size (based on various criteria) every year. Well there is good recent evidence that this growth rate is still continuing.

Roughly 9 months ago I wrote a blog post about "parkrun world domination in your lifetime". Have a quick read of that post if you have the time, as it does show that expecting parkrun to keep doubling in size forever is simply not possible  (just like story of the grains of wheat on a cheeseboard did for some king whom I can't remember the name of). This growth cannot go on forever, that is unless someone uses parkrun to spread friendships beyond this planet.

I have had a quick look at recent attendances, and the equivalent date last year, and have found that for this period of the year at least attendances are still doubling in attendance numbers.

2012		2013
Date	Attendance	Date	Attendance	Growth
18th August	21,877	17th August	42,694	95%
25th August	20,113	24th August	39,042	94%
1st September	21,187	31st August	44,351	109%
8th September	24,408	7th September	44,226	82%

Firstly, of course, I must say that this is a very small sample to base statistics on. And secondly, it demonstrates that there is significant fluctuation in the figures each week of each year.

However, it certainly shows that, give or take some fluctuation, the number of people running a parkrun each week this year (over the last 4 parkrundays at least) is pretty much double the number of last year.

To make this coming parkrunday double up on the same weekend last year we need to get 47,034 of us to complete a parkrun. Let's see if we can manage that!