The East Devon Community Race Series 2010

This series links a number of races organised by village communities and other organisations within and close to the borders of East Devon, albeit many of them in conjunction with AVR, to raise funds for themselves. The series is promoted and co-ordinated by Garry Perratt, chairman of AVR. I organise the series to raise the profile of some excellent races in the area as well to as provide a bit of fun for runners endeavouring to outdo each other over a year's running.

Past year's results and current standings can be found on our results page.

Events

This year's series provisionally includes nine races with five to count. All but one are multi-terrain to a greater or lesser extent and undulating or hilly. Note the addition of the Charmouth Challenge just over the border in Dorset.

1	Axmouth Challenge	10 miles	10 Jan
2	Dalwood Three Hills Challenge	10 miles	28 Feb
3	Umborne Ug	6 miles	13 Jun
4	Talaton Trotter	6 miles	5 Jun?
5	Farway 10K	6 miles	Jun?
6	Charmouth Challenge	8 miles	3 Jul
7	Dalwood Fayre 10K	6 miles	18 Aug
8	Musbury Castle Challenge	10 miles	19 Sep?
9	Yarcombe Yomp	10 miles	6 Nov?

Scoring

A runner's best five results count for the series with performances being measured relative to the median time (the middle finisher), then scaled according to age and gender via formulae approximating to the age-gradings from tables issued by WAVA (the World Association of Veteran Athletes):

your_score = median_time / your_time * 100% * age-factor

The middle finisher gets 100% raw (ungraded) points and the winner about 140%. After scaling vets have more points and seniors the same.

This may seem a bit complicated but positions obviously aren't comparable between races with different numbers of runners, and percentage of winning time is very sensitive to which particular speed merchants happen to turn up. Having said that, I'm not sure just how comparable median is between races since some people are getting a wide range of points for apparently comparable runs, but I'll continue with this method for now and review it at the end of the year.

You will need to run in four races to count for the overall results.

Team scores are computed from the average (mean) percentage age-graded positions so is a measure of the performance of the entire team rather than just the first few. It's not perfect but then nor's the age-grading! At least five runners are required for a team to score.

Garry Perratt (LMRB). (AVR email addresses are Firstname dot Lastname at AxeValleyRunners dot org dot uk.)