Rob Phillips leads August's edition of Reward Running

With two weeks gone, Rob Phillips leads August’s edition of Reward Running.

A category 4 athlete, he started the month with a handicap of 27.34 and has already reduced that to 19.16 (a handicap improvement of 8.19) to give himself a significant cushion in pole position.

July’s winner Chris Clyburn (who recorded an impressive handicap improvement of 8.18 on that occasion) is currently in second place with an further improvement of 3.08 and Chris Smith (Hyde Park Harriers) is in third with an improvement of 2.90.

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.

There are also four spot prizes (Sennheiser headphones) up for grabs in addition to the top ten winners!

If you haven’t entered Reward Running before, here are a few things you need to know!

The Reward Running 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 do that right now!

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. Having a handicap enables you to be part of ‘Reward Running’ (as described above!) 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.