Bushy parkrun achieves largest Christmas Day turnout
With plenty of runners opting for an organised run before Christmas Dinner, Bushy parkrun grabs the headlines by attracting its largest ever Christmas Day field with 2,011 runners and following it up with 1,405 on Saturday. These two events took the two top spots in our 'big six' for the previous week!
The performance of the week is also awarded to a parkrun runner - Alex Yee (handicap -5.9) ran 13:57 for the 5km course at Dulwich on Saturday, This was the second fastest ever to Andy Baddeley's (handicap 3.7) 13:48 that he set in 2012.
Meanwhile, there was an impressive turnout at the Ribble Valley 10k, on Sunday, with Marc Scott (handicap -6.2) and Beth Potter (handicap 1.6) running fast times (28:58 and 32:07 resepectively) to help improve their running handicap scores. Beth knocked a full 1.0 from her time whilst Marc's relatively modest 0.1 improvement gave him a comfortable win ahead of New Balance Manchester athlete, Jonny Mellor.(handicap -5.8) . This is another great performance from Marc who has enjoyed a run of good form that includes a 9th place at the recent European Cross Country Championships.
The big six events with results in so far are:
Bushy parkrun (Christmas Day) - 2,011 finishers
Bushy parkrun (29/12) - 1,405 - finishers
Ribble Valley 10K - 1,306 finishers
Chevin Chase 7 - 1,169 finishers
Norwich parkrun (Christmas Day) - 1,104 finishers
Saltwood Boxing Day 3 - 1,061 finishers*
* Provisional
Did you race this weekend on the road, trails or cross country? It's time to check your results, your handicap score and your ladder position.
By training and racing regularly your runbritain profile will maintain a healthy score and if you ran well in your event at the weekend, you may have reduced your score. The runbritain handicap scoring scheme aims to keep your motivation high by keeping your score low!
Here are some of the benefits of the runbritain handicap scoring system:
- It’s a unique handicap system for running. Just like golf you get a handicap from -8.0 – 36.0 giving runners of all abilities the chance to benchmark their progress and compare their results across a range of terrains and distances. The score automatically updates each time you race (once you have claimed) and rewards regular racing as well as automatically factoring in a degree of difficulty on races that are multi-terrain, hilly or windy.
- You are able to link to your Strava profile from your handicap profile page.To activate this connection, you need to go onto your runbritain profile page and click the Connect button that is underneath your profile picture. (You can also disconnect this from your Account page). When you click the button, you will be taken to an authorisation page on Strava, if you have an account, or it will go to Strava to explain what Strava is with links to register and/or sign in. Once you have connected, a Strava orange badge will be visible on your profile page and anyone will be able to click it to see your Strava page where you have information of the training you have done in order to achieve your performances. This will give a much broader picture of your training, racing and activity.
- You can be a part of the Reward Runnning competition. This competition rewards runners who have reduced their handicap score and runs from March - November each year.
- You can be part of the National Running Ladder and check out where your handicap puts you compared to every other runner in the UK, e.g. does your 5k time put you higher than your friend’s half marathon and marathon times?
- You can find out where your times put you in the official UK road rankings as well as in your age group and postcode.
All the information you need is on the runbritain rankings site. Sign up today and keep your motivation levels high throughout 2019!