Quote Originally Posted by FRAFixtures View Post
The FRA committee together with the governing bodies for fell/hill/mountain running in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales decided to go with "rounded" figures at the time of metrication - the definitions of Cat. A, B and C races are incorporated into both FRA and UKA rules.

You ask why not use a direct conversion of 250ft/mile to the metric equivalent ie 47.5m/km. The new metric rules are expected to be in use for many years to come. An organiser of a new race at some future date could equally well think it strange to have an unmemorable requirement of 47.5m/km!

We then had to decide whether to "round up" or "round down". In the case of Cat. A races, in particular, it was felt more appropriate to raise the bar than to lower it. Hence a relatively small proportion of races have changed category this year.
That's fair enough, that's what I was after. Although I don't think it raises the bar as such (except as in raising the standard required to be allowed into the category). If you think about it, any races that were borderline before will now be downgraded to the lower category thus lowering the bar really by moving relatively harder races into the easier categories. Just a thought.