Will you be our 70,000th handicap claimant?
Did you race over this Christmas weekend on the road, trails or cross country? Most of the results are in and it's time to check your handicap score and your ladder position and if you haven't yet claimed your handicap score - we're looking for our 70,000th claimant! It could be you!!
There were festive running events happening all over the country, this weekend, and parkrun certainly went the extra mile with providing running opportunities. There were 422 parkruns to choose from on Christmas Eve and 156 on Christmas Day. From results already in, the biggest events this weekend were:
Christmas Day Bushy parkrun - 1262 finishers
Christmas Eve Bushy parkrun - 1252 finishers
Saltwood Boxing Day 3 - 1,024 finishers (Provisional)
Greencastle 5 - 801 finishers
ESSAR Chester Round The Walls 4.6? - 493 finishers
Witham 5 - 406 finishers
According to Bushy parkrun's report, 788 ran on Christmas Eve and not Christmas Day, 681 ran on Christmas Day and not Christmas Eve and 364 ran on both days. The two days gave them their 2nd and 3rd ever highest numbers, with their 10th anniversary still on top.
The fastest times, for the weekend, happened at the event on Christmas Day where Andy Maud (handicap -4.9) took 0.1 from his handicap score with his time of 15:07 to be first home and Sacha Kennedy (handicap 7.1), who was the first female across the line, took 0.2 from her score for her time of 20:37. Sacha did the double and her 21:06 on Christmas Eve contributed to the impressive reduction in her score. Robert Eveson (handicap -0.6) got the fastest combined times with 17:05 on Christmas Eve and 17:10 on Christmas Day and this took 0.1 from his score.
Did you race over the Christmas break? By training and racing regularly your runbritain profile will maintain a healthy score and if you plan to peak for a target race, we hope you will improve it by a significant amount and make your way up the National Ladder. Don't forget that the National Ladder not only ranks you in the UK overall but by gender, age and postcode too.
The runbritain hanidcap scoring system was launched just over six years ago and each year there has been an average of almost 10,000 signing up to the system that tracks race and parkrun performances and gives every runner in the UK a handicap score that reflects fitness and commitment levels.
The number of sign-ups per year show a peak of 13,264 in 2012. We have almost hit 10,000 for 2016 and had 169 new sign-ups last week. We are very close to a total of 70,000 since we began and hope to achieve this early in the new year.
All the information you need is on the runbritain rankings site. Sign up today and see if you can be our 70,000th claimant!