Quote Originally Posted by Witton Park View Post
I've just got a few observations here and I wondered what others thought. Please bear in mind this is based on my limited 5 or 6 years of these relays so I stand to be corrected.

1. This year the stats look quite challenging. Of course when the venue is Llanberis that is likely to mean a bit more ascent than the other recent venues, but the legs are also a little longer. So we have approx 20% more climb and 10% more distance than recent years.
Time spreads
Church Stretton 2012 were 3:16 - 6:56
Kettlewell 2011 were 3:23 - 7:00
Lomonds of Fife were 3:50 - 7:54
Ennerdale were 3:29 - 7:03

There's no predicted leg times that I can see on the event website, but looking at the stats I'd have thought any team getting in under 4 hours won't be far off winning.
I'd go as far as to say I think the winning time may be outside of the 4 hour barrier.

2. If I'm close on point 1, then that means that we will have a spread up to 8 hours this year as the slowest teams are usually twice the time of the winning team.
However we have the 3 HOUR Cut off at the end of Leg 2.
I can see this catching a lot, possibly 25% of the teams that are involved.
If you consider that last year around 10% of the leg 1 runners were outside 1 hour and 15% of Leg 2 runners outside of 2 hours and around 10% of the teams involved finished leg 2 outside of 3 hours.

This is definitely a more challenging route.

So should there be a cut-off at 3 hours? Surely it would be better to have a leg 3 mass start at 3 hours and perhaps a leg 4 mass start at 4:30?
That's got to be preferable to having up to 150 runners unable to have their run.

As I say above, I might be missing something as I'm just looking at the stats for the legs and I've never raced in the area, just watched a few races.
I think leg 1 is short.. so surprised if many get cut off.. agree mass start.. seems a petty for people not to make a day of it.. but marshals may have to move.. I dont know.

I don't think it looks overly tough. Look at the eilio race sub 1 hour record.. and thats the terrain.. it is fast runnable terrain for much of it.. ok some steep walks..

Would be very surprised if that was over 4 hours.. leg 2 is basically the eilio race route in reverse.. leg 1 short.. leg 4 up and down eilio good running.. no idea 3 but would guess 20-25 for leg 1, sub 1:10 for leg 2?, leg 4 comfortably sub 1 hour. leaving a good 1:30 for leg 3..

Wasnt CD's old training run war memorial > eilio > war memorial under 1 hour.. so leg 4 is less than that.. in a race environment...