Three Shires

[ba-ba]

I clocked 18km, which makes this technically a medium

[Jennings]

which would make several things interesting......

using it to qualify for other races?
Lakeland classics?

Might of course be that you, and lots of other folks, have improved the original lines of the race.

How do you define a race course length? The original course might have been measured via Red tarn? Not the corner cutting on the drop above the 3 shires stone? Not the straight line up Wetherlam?
The original taped route off Lingmoor?


Then again, might just be like many races...over egged on the distance front? Or even the Bob Graham - which seems to have shrunk from 72 miles to 66 miles.

[Mike T]

Changing from miles to kilometres, to keep the numbers round there is no exact conversion - was it simply decided to keep traditional Longs as Ls despite the fact that they fell short - just - of the 20 kilometre mark? There is no doubt that Three Shires is over 10 miles - I accept it is short of the 20 k/12.4 m given on the FRA race page.

[mapper]

I clocked 18km, which makes this technically a medium

But does your Garmin / Tom Tom etc measure the actual distance travelled (ie the climbs / descents) or just the flat distance. If it just measures the flat distance you would need to add a percentage (whatever figure that may be) to cover the climbs / descents to calculate the actual distance travelled during the race.

[ba-ba]

Using pythagoras:
a^2+b^2=c^2
Length a = 18.26. Height = 1.478*2 as you lose that much height as well = 2.956
c = root(333.4276+8.74) = 18.5km
Working it out like this never altars difference too much.

Given the men's record time (105mins) it's a long race, with middle races not really going above 90mins. There are several races that are borderline or 'historic' A/L category races - Edale Skyline springs to mind

Great day out though, modelling my t-shirt today.

[anthonykay]

Given the men's record time (105mins) it's a long race, with middle races not really going above 90mins. There are several races that are borderline or 'historic' A/L category races - Edale Skyline springs to mind

When the L/M/S categorisation was done according to record times (which I always thought was much more sensible than using distances, given the variety of steepness and terrain in fell races), the boundary between Medium and Long categories was a record time of 105 minutes; so Three Shires really is a borderline case.

With regard to Edale Skyline, which should really be BL, I presume the reason for the AL category is the difficulty of the terrain. Of course, once they have paved the route over Brown Knoll, that reason will no longer be valid!

[wheezing donkey]

When the L/M/S categorisation was done according to record times (which I always thought was much more sensible than using distances, given the variety of steepness and terrain in fell races), the boundary between Medium and Long categories was a record time of 105 minutes; so Three Shires really is a borderline case.

With regard to Edale Skyline, which should really be BL, I presume the reason for the AL category is the difficulty of the terrain. Of course, once they have paved the route over Brown Knoll, that reason will no longer be valid!

I must admit Anthony, I did like the old method of classifying race distance according to course records:-

Upto 40 minutess = Short

40 - 105 minutes = Medium

Over 105 minutes = Long

[ba-ba]

With regard to Edale Skyline, which should really be BL, I presume the reason for the AL category is the difficulty of the terrain. Of course, once they have paved the route over Brown Knoll, that reason will no longer be valid!

I think the Skyline comes out at AL if you measure the route taking in the down-and-up between Grindslow and Ringing Roger (shorter distance, more climb = better stats). Using the more common around route takes it down to BL, but the option is there. Time of year can also add to it.

When the calendar went metric and Weasdale changed from AM to BM but had already been confirmed as a champs race so was one of the few (only?) B's to be a champs race in recent years?

[shoddy]

Does anyone have the contact details for Selwyn the race orginiser?

[dangilbert]

Address, phone number and email here:
http://fellrunner.org.uk/races.php?id=4478