AVR Race Series Championship Information 2023

Overview

The Race Series is a selection of nine races through the year, which have been chosen to support local races, encourage participation and present a competitive challenge. The competition is based upon the best six performances of the nine, which was a deliberate choice to make it a challenging but feasible goal to complete for most of the membership. The competition is between AVR members, and hence the scoring is based on the rank position of members in the race. The scores are absolute values, i.e. not adjusted for age or gender, however the competition is organised into age and gender categories, with prizes awarded to the winner of each to make the competition fair. The idea is that members will know who else is in their category and thus who they are “really racing against”!

Race Types

Most of the races are specified events, i.e. a particular race such as the Grizzly, whereby all runners will be racing each other at the same time. However a few of the events are open i.e. there may be many qualifying events that can be completed at any time in the year and a runner’s best eligible time will be used to determine their ranking.

Scoring

The score in each race is determined by rank position and standardised such that the first AVR to finish will get 100 points (the score is a percentile). This means that every race has the same weight in the total. The formula is:

Score = 100 – (r-1)/N * 100, where r is a runners rank relative to other AVRs only and N is the number of AVRs in the race (i.e. first AVR r=1, last AVR r=N)

So the first AVR will get 100 points and the last will get 100/N points – those who don’t run get zero points so there is always an advantage to running the race even if you come last! The runner who always comes in the middle, let’s call her Michaela Median, will always get about 50 points. Hence all races are evenly weighted, no matter how long they are or how many AVRs participate.

A runner’s highest six scores of the nine races is the total score for the competition, hence a big factor in winning will of course be managing to complete six races! The choice of events is deliberate to make this a challenge (but by no means impossible) for most members.

In the specified events rank position is simply determined by order of crossing the line, i.e. your actual position in the race (not the net position you might see in the Grizzly results for example, which is based on chip time – this technical distinction is unlikely to influence the results of the competition but is stated here to be clear.)

In the open events the rank will be determined based on official (not watch) times submitted – in this case it should be chip times if available, i.e. you won’t be penalised for doing a massive race like London Marathon and taking ten minutes to cross the start line.

Races

Specified Races

Only the main race at each event will count, e.g. Grizzly not Cub.

The Grizzly

Beer Blazer

Umborne Ug

Templar 10

Organised by Teignbridge Trotters, this creates a nice inter-club competition as they have Umborne Ug in their equivalent race series competition.

Devon County Cross-Country

To enter you must be an EA member, which costs £17, however the cost of entry is then only about £8, which makes it in total similar to many other race entry costs. It would be great to have more members participate in this event and we have the chance to do really well as a club, particularly in the older age categories where we are a pretty strong club! Runners who do well in this event could be selected to represent Devon County. It’s also good for us to support England Athletics and the more EA members we have, the more guaranteed club entries we get for the London Marathon (we currently get one place, which is awarded by ballot each year). EA members also get a £2 discount on many race entries (the ones where it asks you for a race license number.)

Semi-Open Races

These events are specified races but occur on multiple days, hence a runner’s best time through the year will be used to score.

Bank Holiday 10k Time Trials

Organised on a few bank holidays through the year.

Seaton Parkrun

Every Saturday morning on the seafront.

Open Races

Any Marathon or Half Marathon event can be used as long as it is a proper, open entry race and you run on the official course (i.e. virtual marathons will not be counted.)