Thanks for the information and I understand the decision and Graham's reasoning.
However I quite like the idea of knocking off a super-long and a champs race in one fell swoop. One less weekend away (for those of us not lakes based), one less car trip, one less potential for clash. This year Three Shires directly clashes with the champs race at Cautley, removing another potential race for people looking at both LCT and champs (both individually and from a team perspective. Which people will be).
Last year Wasdale was both a LCT and English Championships counter. Will the decision to rest the Lakeland Classic (or 2 classics, as in 2016) that is used as an English Champs counter be consistent from now on?
Do you have the data for bumps in entry to the Super-Longs when they are champs races? I see Wasdale had 233 finishers in 2017 (Eng Champs, good weather) as opposed to 94 in 2016 (non-champs, crap weather). I'd expect around the 200-230 mark for Buttermere this year.
Far be it from me to mis-interpret Graham's baby, but I have come to see the LCT as both supporting low attendance Lakeland races, but also to support the tradition of racing Lakeland superlongs (especially Wasdale, Ennerdale and more recently Buttermere; my best Duddon time is ~15mins quicker than best Borrowdale, but it deserves protected super-long status for the first reason of supporting lakeland races).
Were it solely about supporting poorly-attended Lakeland races then surely Lingmell Dash would be in (13 finishers last year despite the publicity of hosting a champs race a couple of years ago) - although this obviously younger so not as traditional as the big jobbas.
Of course a champs race normally results in a faster winning time, so those further down the field see their LCT scores take a hit!
(just a few thoughts from someone who was planning to use Buttermere as an LCT counter)
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