East Pennine Orienteering Club

EPOC club Championship 2010.
So here it is, the Club Championship for 2010. First of all I have to thank all the clubs whose websites I looked at to see how they ran their championships. This included a few fell running clubs too. Our championship format has pinched many of these ideas; I do not claim it to be anything original.

So after running a 2009 dummy championship, I have found a way that will level the playing field for all EPOC competitors, so that W10 can actually compete competitively against M21! It is far too complicated to explain here, but through the jiggery pokery of excel, a colleague who enjoys “playing” with excel has made things  “populate,” whatever that means! All I know is it works and seems to level the playing field whoever you are and whatever course you run. So in my dummy run we had the following results for Newmillerdam.
Megan Harrison came in first, just in front of Dick Spendlove, who just pipped Neil Devlin, who snuck in front of me, and I was just ahead of Jean Lockhead, who was just ahead of Andy Thorpe and Dickie Wren! So Orange first, Blue second, Green third, Blue 4th, Light Green 5th and Brown 6th and 7th!  So it seems to work! So Andy and Dickie have to run much faster!

However, and it is a big however, there is a little added frisson as it were. In this day and age of all colour coded courses where you can run any course you like, how does that affect the championship? Well you have a base line course to run, which is loosely based on Compass Sport Trophy classes. So at Local events/Colour Coded you run as follows, but can run what you like:

Yellow-W/M10-
Orange - W/M14-
Light Green - W/M18-
Short Green Vets - W60+/M75+ Where no short green, then light green!
Green Women - W20- and W45+, Men - M60+
Blue Women - W21/35/40   Men -  M20- and M45+
Brown - M21/35/40

At Regional Events/Badge Events, you run to BOF guidelines. But you can still choose to run any course

At National Events, you run your age class course. Long or Short, but note the caveat below!

Now for the frisson, if you choose to run a longer/more difficult course then your result gets a positive weighting, so you score a better relative time. The more you “run up”, the better weighting you get, hence Dick Spendlove beating me at Newmillerdam as he ran up! However if you choose to run down then you get a worse weighting!  Your weighting improves with each distance you run up, and vice versa if you run down. The same applies for regional events and National events. For events where there is Short, Medium and long, 18 to 55 year olds should run long, 14-16 and 55+ run medium, and 14- run short, but you can run anything, but have adjustments as necessary. In effect you are being rewarded for competing at a longer distance, and penalised for going a shorter distance.

Once the scores have been ranked, then the first placed runner scores 1 point, the second placed runner scores 2, and so on. At the end of the year the person with the lowest score wins! Your 2 best runs from each category count toward the final score.

Now to qualify for the Championship, you must complete at least 2 runs in each category. Local, coloured purple, Regional, coloured green, and Championship races, coloured yellow, on the chart below.

I have spread the races out throughout the year, avoiding July and August.
I also tried to get a spread of types of event, but the Championships that I thought we should include, were all at the beginning of 2010! I also tried to get in one a month!

In addition to the Club Championship there are some other competitions too, there will be a ladies champs, a vets champs (over 40s!) and a junior champs! There will also be a Local king and queen, Regional king and queen and a Champion king and queen, these will be the people who score the best in each of the categories! Gents and ladies!

The events are all provisional, bearing in mind there may be cancellations and changes, but I’ll use round robin emails and the Epistle to inform club members of any changes. It’s a while since we have had a championship, so it is in its teething stage, so we’ll suck it and see for 2010.
If anyone would like to donate or sponsor trophies that would be most welcome as would any ideas to make it better!

Graham Lloyd