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Roberttown Road Runners Grand Prix Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Grand Prix?
The Grand Prix is an annual, optional competition, open to all members of Roberttown Road Runners (RRR). The club designates a number of official races every year as being a part of our “Grand Prix” series – runners enter as many of the races as they like (a minimum of 6) and their times count towards their Grand Prix score. The best 6 scores will be used to determine the overall winners.
I’m a slower runner, so why should I bother to enter?
Although the Grand Prix is a competition, it uses a handicap system so in theory everyone in the club from the slowest to the fastest has an equal chance of winning. Runners are measured against their own times, rather than those of other club runners – in other words, you’re racing against yourself, and striving to do better.
What are the benefits of taking part?
The main purpose of the Grand Prix is to measure runners’ effort and improvement, relative to their expected times. The Grand Prix series is one way that runners can chart their own improvement, and it engenders a friendly spirit of competition within the club.
How do you choose which races are part of the Grand Prix?
The Grand Prix races are chosen by the Committee but in addition any club member can recommend a race of any distance to be included in the series. We now include a parkrun in each series as well. We will try to keep the maximum distance to 7 miles, so as to be all inclusive to those that feel unready to exceed this distance. Once we are able to include actual races, we will try and limit the travelling distance to around 30 miles.
Grand Prix series 2022 :-
The adjudicators for the event will be Jon.B, Sarah, Michael, and Peter.K.
The new Grand Prix series starting in January will revert to a more traditional feel, with the series being held over 12 months, with a minimum of 2 races per month. Qualifying races will be advertised approximately 3 months in advance to give you time to plan.
In total there will be 24 -36 races to choose from throughout the year and these will be a mixture of terrains and distances and will also include a fair proportion of Park Runs. To qualify you must submit race times for a minimum of 6 advertised events and you can compete in as many events as you want, with your best 6 scores to count.
The base times for each member will be split into 2 categories :-
- For those members that competed in the virtual GP that ended in December 2021, we will calculate a time based on the submitted times for those runs.
- For other members that run the new series, we will base their times calculated on best known times under race conditions and in some cases, we will have to revert to known times from 2019. We fully appreciate that this is not strictly ideal, but we feel that this is the fairest way to produce a starting point. If we feel that for any reason the times look to have been miscalculated, we will re-visit and discuss with the member involved.
- Base time explanation :- For each member that we hold sufficient history of times achieved in competitive races and Park Runs, we can quite accurately determine an average time each member is able to run a mile in, this is what we called the ‘Base Line’ and is an average over all distances, route difficulty etc. It is far too difficult to calculate different base lines for differing race routes e.g., flat v hilly, and we feel that this is fair to all members. For newer members or members that have not participated in many races, we will have to calculate their base times on the first event they choose to run in the series.
- Example – Runner A is given a base line time of 8 mins /mile and runs a 6-mile route in 49mins. The base line for 6 miles would be 48mins (8×6), so would score 97.96% of base.
- Example – Runner B is given a base time of 9 mins / mile and runs the same 6-mile route in 52mins. The base line for 6 miles would be 54mins (9×6), so would score 103.85% of base.
- The base line for each runner stays the same minutes/mile over the duration on the Grand Prix series and scores are accumulated over the whole series.
- If a member chooses to run 8 out of the overall advertised runs, his of hers best 6 scores will be used.
For each of the routes that are set, if Runner A runs every race at exactly 8mins/mile, they will achieve 500 points.
The whole ethos of the event is to give each member a fair chance to win the overall trophy and is not just about who is the fastest at the Club, it is about how much each member has improved their own performances.