The idea is the brainchild of club chairman, Bob Keast, a.k.a. 'the man with the stop-watch'! He is the chief time-keeper and overseer of fair play (checking no overly competitive Harriers had been out in the park beforehand planting devilish booby-traps to gain the advantage over their fellow club members etc...!)
So, how does it work?
The idea is a simple one: before the race, competitiors give a selection of recent race performance times to Bob and from these he ranks all competitors into order, based on the likelihood of them finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. He converts the percentage difference in performance between competitors into a time and from this time he calculates the staggered start. With me so far...?!
Competitors then start at these pre-calculated intervals and must complete 3 laps of Phear Park (about 1.8 miles in distance).
So, what happened on the night?
11 brave soles turned up as guinea pigs for this pilot run. If they had recent race times they had already given these to Bob, if not, Sandy Bay time trial times or else just plain guess work was used to calculate the stagger.
Roger Riggs was the first to start rightly, follwed by Scott Jordan who had given 2 rather conservative times (come on, the Sidmouth and Totnes 10ks are hardly representative of a runner's usual 10k time!!). Next were the evenly matched pairing of Dawn Teed and Lorraine Gilson, shortly followed by Terry Oldham, Rory Devine, Dave Wright, Richard Bishop, Eddie (making guest appearance) and Tony hatchard. Then, last but not least, Dave Stone was the last runner to start, 5 whole minutes and 26seconds later... well, that's what you get for being so darn fast!!
Scott took the victory from Roger Riggs in second. Bob then lost count as everyone else stormed in close together in a blanket finish, all finishing within 10-15 seconds of each other, suggesting the calculated handicap was pretty accurate and the concept worked well!
If everyone is interested in making this a more permenant fixture on the monthly calendar, it's been suggested by Bob that we would make it into a mini-league, with the first runner home each time getting 10 points, second 9 points, third 8 etc. and perhaps have a 1st/2nd/3rd trophy at the end of the series, with a runner's best 3 places (and points) out of a possible 5 to count. What do people think...?
The competitors complete a warm up lap before the first, of what will hopefully be a whole series, of club handicap races in Phear Park.
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