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Club Website

Thanks to Beth Barrington for taking on the running of the club website – she is doing a splendid job. Don’t forget, again - it is a Club website, where contributions in the form of results, dates, news, opinions, suggestions and so on are welcomed from all members. Indeed, without such contributions, the website would not exist.

10K Winter Handicap Race Series

As I am sure most of you are aware, we are now into the 2009/10 Winter Handicap series with at present about 60 entries. Over the last couple of years we have been trying to improve the overall running of the race & to make it as hassle free as possible for you the runners.

Please note you cannot register for the handicap on the night of a race, therefore if you have not already registered you will only be able to enter on Round 3. This will just give you the four rounds you need to qualify for the series. Therefore last entry date for the series will be 1st December 09.

It is our intention that the week before a race the “time out” for competitors will be listed on the website, we will also still provided lists on the evening. However it is the competitor’s responsibility to be at the start line on time, if you miss your slot you will lose your time for the race.

With regard to the first round of the series, because a number of competitors did not have any official times from a previous 10k race & their times were only an estimate. To make it as fair as possible it was decided that if the actual race time were six minutes less than their estimated time, their time would not be counted. This rule had been used previously some time ago and really only relates to the first round & to those competitors who do not have a 10k time.

In the first round of this year’s competition you will probably have noticed that some of the faster runners are leaving earlier than normal. This has been done to try and reduce the overall waiting time for some competitors. However this has the effect that we are unable to determine the winner of a round until all the times have been adjusted. Unfortunately we are unable to complete this on the night of the race and therefore the Prize will be presented the following week.

However the results of the race should be on the website within a couple of days.

We are still looking to see if we can find a new route, which will be safe and more a circular route rather than the present out to Fremington & back. If anyone does have any ideas we would be interested, so please let us know.

Finally the organiser’s, Carol & myself hope you all enjoy the handicap series through the winter, the subsequent results inspire you to do better and at the end in March 2010 we shall have a worthy winner for the series.

Alan Talmage