My first Borders League win

I've been doing this road race league each year for about 3 or 4 years and today was my first win. It was also my fastest time on that course. The race started slow because I made myself not led for the first half and then after that it was a tough battle for the win. The battle for the win made victory sweeter so I was thankful to Dean Longley for the competition. I love to blog more but with a 9 month old who's poorly, and loads of housework I need to go. Bye bye.

North Wales Cross Country

Today's meet was at Wrexham, just 1 mile away from my house so how could I not go. 

I came forth overall and was close to 2nd. I just got beat in that last mile where the three of us knew it was going to be a fight. At one time in the race I thought I was going to win. But at mile three my club member, James Roberts just went off off into the lead on his own. 

For once I started, so I thought, conservatively being being quite a few at about 6th place, but the first mile was still too quick at 5.15. It goes to show that most runners go off too fast. Miles 2 and 3 where fun, i was working hard but slowly catching the lead group i knew I'd catch them because they went off too quick. i smiled at the thought of catching them. Paul Jones was leading and when i caught up to him at mile three, as I've already said, James went off like a rocket and left about four of us to battle it out. 

A runner from Oswestry called Oli was very strong in the last half mile and i got boxed in behind a runner we were lapping which i think cost me third place but who really knows. 

Overall i was also pleased with my average pace of 5.25 for the 5.5.5mile course, my fastest pace ever on cross country. 

End.

My guide on the RunBritain Handicap, SSS, vSSS, Rankings

We all like to spend a bit of time after a race comparing our times to others.  The more geeky runners among us also enjoy taking into account other things like the weather on the day, the course profile, wind etc. I use guides from the Jack Daniels’ running formula book to adjust race times for ascent, wind etc so I obtain an equivalent time for a flat course on a perfect weather day.  So, you can imagine that a system such as RunBritain’s handicap is right up my street.

RunBritain takes it’s Athletes and Race data from the Power of 10 and then waves a magic wand and hey presto it creates:

-          Handicap;

-          Standard Scratch Score (SSS);

-          Versus SSS;

-           UK Ranking.

In this article/blog I write about my understanding of these RunBritain features. 

RunBritain records all UKA official races and you can also upload your own performances.

Handicap

The RunBritain handicap scoring system is a unique way of measuring your progress and comparing yourself with other runners.

As in golf, handicaps go from scratch (zero, or even slightly negative for elite runners) to 36 with increments of 0.1.

To work out your handicap, from what I can gather, Run Britain uses your recent best performances and also adjusts this by the "SSS" which is their measure of the course difficulty including weather conditions on the day.

This means that you can improve your handicap at any race.  RunBritain knows if the race course was hard.

A strange thing I've noticed is that your handicap can change without you doing anything!  I'll say more on this later in the article. But first lets look at the SSS and vSSS. 

SSS

This is a score of the course difficultly on that day.  The higher the number the more difficult the course was.

So for me, one of the highest scores I have is a 5.0 which was a race called Tattenhall Tough 9.  The name gives it away, it got a high score because it was a tough off road and hilly course.

The lowest score I have is -0.2 which was a 5.5mile flat road race on a fine day.

The SSS seems to take into account:

-          Hilliness;

-          Weather;

-          Anything else which made the course difficult for that day.

What I don’t know for certain is how RunBritain assesses the course difficulty.  Does it use it’s own race data or external data.  It’s very likely that it uses it’s own data, i.e. it has a expectation of how each participant should do and if they all do worse then it creates a higher score.  This is where I think the system may be flawed because if only a small number of people take part in the race surely it can’t be as accurate.  Take for example a small race which has a high percentage of a local club attend.  The race is on a Saturday and on the day before, Friday, that club has a hard training session.  Everyone in the club therefore does the race slower than expected.  This means it’ll get a higher SSS score which could artificaly bump up your handicap.

vSSS

The vSSS is a measure of how you did compared to everyone else in a particular race.  The v, stands for versus and it's You v. Everyone else.  It's quite clever!  It looks at everyone else’s handicap and, somehow, in the background, estimates everyone's expected time.  Then it looks at this expected time and rates their performance against everyone else on the day. 

If you get a negative figure it means you were better than the average person. If it's a positive figure then you did worse than the others.

Lets look at a couple of examples:

Looking at my profile on Run Britain there is a half marathon I did where I got a negative vSSS score. This means that my performance on the day was better than expected when relating it to others in the race.  The reason is quite funny, it's because in that race I ran a shorter distance than most people because most people went the wrong way!

Let's look at Nick McCormick who holds the fastest 10k time in the UK this year, 2014.

Nov 14 his handicap is -4.6 (yes negative).

On the 9^th March 2014 he ran 28:56 for a 10K this resulted in a vSSS of 1.2 on a fast course, sss 0.2.

Then on 18 May 2014 he ran 29.21 which is slower but his vSSS was better at 0.5. This is because the sss for the course was 1.4, tougher. It shows that compared to Nick everyone ran slower than expected on that course.

A bit of fun

RunBritain has a competition each month for the best handicap improvement so I thought that it would be a funny experiment, which I couldn't possibly do, to ask everyone in a race to run slower apart from one person who runs as fast as they can.  This person should have a relatively high handicap.  Then their vSSS would be off the chart for that race thus improving their handicap a lot.  This person then should have a good chance of winning the best handicap improvement that month! That would be good fun. 

Handicap changing on its own

I've noticed that my handicap can change without doing anything.  I think this is due to: 

- The first few days after a race the SSS for the course takes time to settle in so this, in turn, changes the v.SSS which then can change your handicap. In a recent race I did my vSSS just kept getting better over the week.  Maybe some of the other runner's handicap changed in the week and so updated the v.SSS?  I just don't know how the calculations work and whether or not the vSSS closes at some point afterwards so that it stops being affected by other handicaps? It's a mystery. 

- Older races will stop being a influence on your handicap and drop off. 

National Ladder

The main National Ladder position at the top of the page is your ranking out of all the road runners in the UK of your gender. They are just like the rankings in other sports like golf or tennis. Further down the page on RunBritain shows where you stand in your age group and out of everybody.

Post Code

There's also a post code rating to compare how you fare against others In your post code. So if you're 85 and live on a remote island you have a chance of being first. It is based on the first part of your post code. you can't view the other people in your post code otherwise you could hunt them Down!

Last thoughts 

So if you've made it this far, well done.  You may be even more confused than when you started.  I certainly am.  This, however, is often the way with things in life, the more you study something the more questions it raises, but hopefully along the way you've learnt something. 

If you know anything else or can add anything please comment; be nice, I'm not a writer by trade so my grammar may not be it's best. 

Erddig 10k

This was the second year of this event that is put on by Expedition Wise Ltd. The managing director goes to the same church as me and I've know Brian for a long time so I like to support his event. I won it last year after having a good battle with Lee Jones who is another good quality North Wales runner and he usually beats me. This year I felt stronger but I wasn't sure of the win because I didn't know who would turn up. When I got there I was looking around to see if there were any fast guys. I'd recognise anyone capable of beating me; "keep your friends close, keep your enemies even closer", but sometimes a these races someone travels from afar that surprises me. When the gun went, alright it was a hooter, I went off like a bullet, well alright like a fast runner, too fast, when I looked at my watch at 400 meters it said 4.43 pace whooops. But there were four other people with me. Then I realised they were doing the 5k and not the 10k. After 1k it was just two of us until 4.5k then at 5k he stopped and I had to carry on on my own until the end. It was wonderful to have my family there to support me and also most of the marshals and helpers were from my church so that was cool too. Although we were all missing the Sunday morning meeting. I'm sure God won't mind, he's got more things to sort Out! My time was 35.18. Last year it was 35.35. Not bad for a trail 10k with about 6 kissing gates I had to stop at.

Why do you run. The question

From listening to runners I hear them thinking of this question quite a lot. I've heard lots of different answers but mostly runners are not 100 percent sure.

When I'm asked I sometimes struggle to find an answer, not because there's no reason but because I don't think about it.

Do we need to justify ourselves? Are we allowed to do something without even thinking of a reason for doing it?

Long progression run hurt until...

I'm following the Advanced Marathoning schedule at the moment. Today's run was a killer, 24 miles progression. That means for the last third of the session I should be 10% slower than marathon pace. My left leg was really hurting from 5 miles and I decided that I wouldn't do the last 8 miles at 6m10s pace because I was tired and the leg hurt. I was on my own until 18 miles and it was tough. I just felt sorry for myself and focused on the rain, grit, cars not moving over enough, etc. BUT then at 18 miles my good training partner joined me and running became easier. yeah, still hard but an easy hard. It's surprised me how much better it is to run a with someone. I ended up doing the pace I wanted. Sweet.

Another weeks training

109 miles Monday AM: Slow job into work listening to podcasts. Also stressing a bit because I’ve been waiting for a new Garmin and new trainers. Organising delivery and replacements is not something that I like to do especially when my wife is not at home this week and there’s no-one there to take receipt. I left a note on my door saying leave parcels in porch. Mid morning I went on the UPS online tracking website, it said CUSTOMER UNAVAILABLE WILL CALL AGAIN. I called the customer services and said I left a note but they want a signature. Pulling my hair out! But then they said I could sign the card they left and leave that and they’ll put it in the porch tomorrow. 10:00am trainers delivered at work, in hind sight I should have got the Garmin delivered to work! PM: Ran home and released that I’d locked the porch door so I had to eat humble pie. The delivery guy wrote on the note: Porch Locked! I left him another note as I knew he would be trying again tomorrow “Now open”. Tuesday AM: Cycled in to work PM: Ran home recovery run as had a hard run tomorrow. Wednesday AM: 14 miles progression. I found another route to work! It cut out 2 miles along a road and along a path instead. The last five miles I was dreading as it was to be at 6:10 pace. I think the distraction of the new route took my mind off the pain because I felt OK and picked up the pace to just under 6mm. I was really impressed on this run with a dog walker. As I ran past she controlled both her dogs to sit next to her and they kept still as I passed. I was running an out and back along a trail so after five mins I was running towards the same owner and this is the impressive thing. As I was getting closer the dogs were too far away from her to grab so she pulled out a whistle and blew it. The dogs then sat where they were and stayed sat until I passed. Very impressive. PM: Cycle home. Thursday AM: Jogged in (usual route as it’s the shortest at 10.3miles). Found a place to do my daily core work (I’m doing 6 mins twice a day, planks and bicycle kicks). PM: Very slow, 7.30mm until I met Darren then the pace was 6.30mm. Friday AM: Progressive 12.3 miles into work. 6.19 pace overall with last third at 6mm. It rained most of the way but this just made me cooler. When running hard my head goes a bit strange and I think about the most bizarre things. For example, there is a regular bus service going along my run commute between Wrexham and Chester. I know all of the registration plates! I thought this morning that I’d not seen J100 ABW for a while then it passed me. This, for some reason, really cheered me up.  PM: Nice slow jog home Saturday AM: Didn’t wear a watch but I went to Halfords with my wife and ran home. I think it was about 5.5miles and I did some sprints. Sunday Race day. I went to the North Wales Half Marathon which started near Conwy. I thought I might win it, not because I’d be fast but because it was a low profile race. I was wrong! Andi Jones and some other top notch runners turned out. I came fourth and wondered why I train so hard when there are runners out there so much quicker than me. I don’t know what came over me but somehow I got one of Andi’s races mixed up with Steve Way’s and congratulated him for the wrong race. Whoops. The race was really hard, two miles on sand, up a mountain (370m) and on a windy sea front too. O well, a good training session as we say when we have a slow race