RE age limits, there really ought to be some correlation between different disciplines, when my daughter has run U11 in X-country, U12 in fellrunning and U13 in track and field in 2013, all legitimately, all correct. This is a child in yr6 with a late July birthday!!!
If you have come across races where the actual lengths exceed the expressed maximum, then I would be a) surprised and b) disappointed. However, race organisers are encouraged to make the championship races hard and to use the full distances where appropriate. The max distances get longer as the competitors get older. This is because they mature. Using up to the max distances allows them to get used to running senior length races. The U20 champs deliberately uses Medium and Short races, to give them a chance to compete at a high level, but without having to run the Long races. This seems to be popular.Originally Posted by withaY
The longer races have lower entries because they are for the older categories, and there is a significant drop off for these ages in all sports. The shorter U18 and U16 races also have lower entries.
Lecky
My coaching blog
Yes I do! This is one race.
In my experience ALL of the volunteers on both the main FRA and Junior Committees are well intentioned. To suggest otherwise is what I was getting at in my previous post. However, as you so rightly said, everyone makes mistakes.
If the forum did not contain what could be interpreted as insulting comments about volunteers, perhaps those that don't read or contribute might do so.
Lecky
My coaching blog
There ought to be but it'll never happen. At least XC and T&F each have their own single consistent system. Fellrunning doesn't even have that!
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i can only use my limited experience to comment but having two girls racing.. one regularly she will run this year in u10 fra, u12bofra, u11uka ,u11xc.. thats simply bonkers.. add into the mix her comment today.. did you see how big that u12 yr old was.. and you have a catagorisation system that no one with a clean piece of paper could conceive.
the distance thing is a red herring.. 4 laps of the running track is one thing. 1.6k at church stretton was another ( it was however the best organised best laid out best prizes race of the year thus far)
having just run google maps over each of this years u10 races they range from 1300m to 2200m ( rounded down to the nearest 100) now i ve started ill work out the elevation gains..
Last edited by withaY; 24-06-2013 at 08:20 AM.
Why?
Running round a track has little to do with running a fell race other than that they both need legs.
What critics of the current system fail to grasp is that, unlike T&F etc the FRA does not organise fell races. Fell running is individual organiser driven and that is the system that participants have praised and welcomed for decades. "Keep the blazers out of fell running!"
But you can't have the penny and the bun: freedom for individual organisers AND the FRA ruling with an iron hand.
Apples and oranges.
"...as dry as the Atacama desert".
You are just taking the opposite view..
It makes no sense not to standardise.. not doing so just causes confusion. There's this strange view that any sort of standardisation is meddling.. yet this is a far more informative and common sense approach than switching to metric..
And running, fell and track, is not apples and oranges. Any form of endurance running is very similar; the best fell runners are almost always the better fell runners.
Look at Kate McIlory? 2005 World Mountain Running Champion.. a steeple chaser... so would suggest they were similarish.. and before you add Mountain and Fell are apples and oranges... nonsense.. we have the full continuum in the UK.
I'm quite surprised this isn't done anyway, just because of insurance which normally from the FRA, and you'd think such things would be dictated, distances to be raced, ages etc, so you'd expect this to be already standardise.
Iain,
I knew if I lived long enough I would agree with part of one of your postings and the day has finally arrived, although you seem confused by "best" and "better".
Toodle pip!
"...as dry as the Atacama desert".
Road runners.. still you gloss over the world mountain running champ came from a track running back ground.. it would suggest they aren't quite so different. I do wonder if its a pond size issue.. people like being the big fish.. so get scared of the other larger disciplines rather than welcoming the challenge..
Our leading international hopes should be pushed away from fell running anyway, get them on the track - they can come back to a minority sport once they've reached the potential that the track will assist with.. walking up and down hills won't..
But people like Nick Swinburn, Nathan Jones.. too good and too talented to focus on the fells, they'll dip in and dip out of fell running every few years but thankfully their coaches/advisors advised them well and they become better runners using the other disciplines...
Now if race age-groups were standardised to age-on-1st Jan (nothing to do with permissible distances, just by mutual agreement of the ROs), then you'd have the older runners wanting legitimately to 'step-up' as Witton Park described it last year ~ in this case running the race distance permitted by their age-on-day. It would still confuse Grand Prix scoring, but it would seem unfair on the stronger athletes to prevent them from running a more challenging race. The age-on-day distance limits were primarily introduced to prevent any inadvertent rule-breaking, as if people accidentally used their 1st Jan age, they would never end up in a higher age category.
And the completely separate matter: If there is much feeling that Junior Champs races have been too hard on too many occasions, then this is something that needs to be raised at a committee meeting, possibly via club or members' reps. Otherwise nothing will happen on this.
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