Mercia Fell Runners Club

Here are the races and rules for 2018.

The races are:

The rationale for these races (from the championship organiser Pete Hudson) are as follows:

We are aware of 3 clashes with British or English races on the 11th March and 6th May and the Inter Counties on the 19th May, however with so many races in the calendar such clashes are going to be inevitable but with 24 races hopefully most will find enough races to qualify for our Championships.
The first race is the Trigs on the 14th January, subject to approval of the following, Mark will post the upcoming races for the Championships on a monthly basis and hopefully a system can be put in place to provide a monthly results update.

For this year's Club Championships there are 24 qualifying races spread as evenly as possible over 12 months to be as fair as possible to the majority of the membership i.e. 2/month apart from July which has 3 and October which has 1 (as the British Relays are on the 20th). Some of the home races have been deliberately chosen to avoid Mercia organised races so that less Mercia members will be involved in the organisation and marshalling to provide more opportunities to run. However there are some unavoidable races included such as the Trigs and South Mynd Tour as we have a shortage of local Longs. The Long Mynd Valleys (despite requiring an enormous effort by the membership) is also included owing to it's perennial popularity. There is to be no compulsory marshalling stipulation as a qualification for entering the Championships but we expect common sense and sense of duty to prevail.
There are only 2 National Championship races included (less than previous years) as those participating in these tend to be pursuing a different agenda and they can also have a more limited entry. In addition we have not included any Ultra or Super Long races as they are less inclusive and require a more specialised approach which ought to be separately recognised.
There are 9 Short races, 8 Medium races and 7 Long races of which 10 are Home and 14 are Away.
We are attempting to encourage members to explore as many classic fell racing areas in England and Wales:
There are 3 Lake District, 2 South/West Pennines, 2 North Wales, 3 South Wales, 2 Peak District and 2 Yorkshire Dales races.
Hopefully amongst some old favourites people will find some new favourites!

Scoring is to be based on the British and English system and is only relevant to Mercia runners in any particular race i.e. 52 points for the 1st Mercia runner home, 49 for 2nd, 48 for 3rd and so on. In the event of more than 50 Mercia runners completing, the 50th and and any subsequent runners would all gain 1 point.
This system could benefit equally elite runners and the more adventurous travelling to races further afield where there will be fewer runners.

The category prizes and qualifying requirements for the various age groups remain the same as in previous years:

• U18 - best four short races.
• U23, Open, V40 and V50 - best six races to include at least one from each distance and at least one away race.
• V60 - best six races to include at least one short, one medium and one away race (there is no requirement for a long race).
• V70 - best three races at any distance home or away.

There will be 3 additional prizes;

• 1. Best combined score for the 3 short July races.
• 2. Most away races completed.
• 3. Best Newcomer (new member joining after January 1st who completes the required number of races to qualify).