The handicap is the longest-standing event in the club’s calendar and existed way before Parkrun was a twinkle in their eye. A monthly 5km race around the park where the idea is to improve on your previous best result. Your Personal Best (PB) becomes your Handicap, and the winner is not the fastest but the most improved.
Each month, the most improved were awarded a trophy and points. These points were fed into a table, so at the end of each year, the person with the most points, so the most improved over the year, was awarded the season’s winner trophy.
Over the years the format has changed, along with the way the points and improvements were calculated.
At the end of the 2022 season, we surveyed participants and members to see if there were ways to improve the handicap to reduce the number of volunteer hours and increase participation. From this feedback, one of these was to drop the points tables and thus the monthly individual prizes. However, after discussions with the committee about the handicap, we have decided to bring this back for 2024 to see if we can increase participation. Therefore, the 2024 Handicap Series will be as follows.
- It is still 5k around the same course, going up the pineapple first and alternating every month (where possible).
- There will be a handicap on the last Saturday of every month, except December, and 4 Nightcap on the second Thursday of May, June, July and August. These are subject to change depending on race schedules and other activities in the park or for the club. See the calendar on the website for the schedule.
- You must pre-register, via Webscorer, to take part and this must be done before 7:00 am on the Saturday races, or 6:30 pm for the Nightcaps. You only need to register once and will be entered into all remaining races in the series.
If you are thinking of running then we encourage you to register anyway as no issues for the team if you don’t turn up.
A link will be on the club’s website, or you can register via https://www.webscorer.com/registerseries?pid=1&seriesid=338629
- Each season new numbers are issued. Therefore, you will need to collect a new number from registration at your first race. You keep this number for the whole series.
Once you have your number, there is no need to visit registration again, you can go straight to the start.
Registration is open from 8:45 am to 9:15 am on the Saturday races, and 6:45 pm to 7:15 pm for the Nightcap.
No previous numbers should be used and anyone with a missing or incorrect number will be disqualified.
- The race will start at 9:30 am, for the Saturday races and 7:30 pm for the Nightcaps.
- You will need to run 2 races to set your handicap time. If you ran 2, or more, races in 2023, then your best result from 2023 will be your handicap for 2024.
- For 2024 we will be using Age Graded times for your handicaps and improvements.
Age Grading uses tables, published by World Masters Athletics and is the best time for your age.
This should level the times out based on age and gender. Having produced tables for these for 2023, this does seem to be the case.
There are no such tables for non-binary athletes so the actual times are used for these athletes.
- Ages are calculated as of the first race in January.
- Your improvement is calculated as a percentage in seconds and the calculation is:-
(Handicap – Race time) / Handicap
As an example, a handicap of 22 minutes and a race time of 21 minutes is (1320-1260)/1320 = 0.045 or 4.54%
- The maximum improvement is capped at 9%.
- At each race, a trophy will be awarded for the most improved as well as second and third. So please hang around post-race for the presentation.
- At each race, 100 points are awarded to the most improved, 99 for second, etc. Therefore, the number of participants does not affect the number of points available.
- For the series table, the best 6 results are used.