May Reward Running approaches half way

There are two weeks left to enter May’s bumper edition of Reward Running and plenty of opportunities to race in one of the busiest months of the year; check out our runbritain events diary for some ideas if you’re not sure whether to target a 5k, 10k, half marathon or even a multi terrain adventure race!

Congratulations to all our prize winners in a record breaking April edition of Reward Running where we had more entries than ever before.

The top prize went to Keith Donald who reduced his handicap by almost six points to take his new mark to 9.445. He took the overall victory and was also the top placed category 3 athlete (athlete with a handicap of 13-20 going into the competition), winning an adidas mi-coach for his efforts.

All of the other athletes in the top ten took home Sennheiser headphones: Stephen Maddison finished second on the leader board with Guy Barrett third (he also doubled up as the top category 4 scoring athlete).

Mark Warburton, Marcus Nichols and Matthew Roberts - also the top placed category 2 athlete - finished in fourth to sixth respectively, with Adam Stark in seventh and Sophie Evans, the first female on the winners’ list, finished eighth.

Steven Garden finished ninth and took the regular racer credit while Stephen Chew finished in tenth and took the category 1 title.

Caroline Meredith won the April spot prize and also takes home Sennheiser headphones.

After last month’s bonus month, we have an even bigger and better bonus month in May with three spot prizes up for grabs!

Helen Crossland is the current May leader with a handicap improvement of 4.28 so far...

In case it’s escaped your attention, Reward Running is our free monthly competition where runners can win a prize if they reduce their handicap score by the largest number of points in the month. At the end of the month, the runners who are in the Top 10 of the leaderboard that month will win a prize - an adidas miCoach for the winner, and Sennheiser headphones for the rest.

The top 10 consists of the runners who have improved their handicap the most in that month (make sure you’ve claimed your free runbritain handicap first!), but within the top 10, one place is reserved for the most improved in each of the four handicap categories:

1: 5 or under
2: 6-12
3: 13-20
4: 21 or above

There is also one place reserved for the most improved runner that has run at least 10 races in the year before the competition month.

To sign up for Reward Running you must first have claimed your free runbritain handicap and if you haven’t done so already, here are five great reasons to get involved:

1. It’s a unique handicap system for running. Just like golf you get a handicap from 0.0 – 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.

2. 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?

3. Be part of ‘Reward Running’ and be in with a chance of winning an adidas mi-coach or Sennheiser headphones if your score shows the greatest improvement - it’s free to enter too

4. Find out where your times put you in the official UK road rankings

5. And finally...log your training mileage, watch your progress graph rise and check out head-to-heads with your training partners.

All the information you need is on the runbritain rankings site.