Summer Challenge
A competition within a competition for Group 4 and 5 runners. Ladies versus Men.
Conceived after Dunham the challenge came out of the ‘age before beauty’ comment in the last newsletter. A challenge by the Grumpy Old Men to the young ladies who are threatening their status in the club – both Tracy and Sally beat Roy (champion Grumpy in 2004) at Christleton. Tracy was absent, but Roy gained revenge over Sally at Dunham. Like much of the GOM’s bluster this challenge died a death following a quick look at Graham’s Summer Series score-sheet – the ladies would win by a country mile.
So we’ve changed the rules, opening it up to all the men in Group 4 except (sorry, Steve) those who run with Group 4 but are of Group 3 ability. This brings-in the younger men; the likes of Bill, Don, Gareth and Sean.
The scoring system will be that used for the Summer Series so (reading from Graham’s table following Dunham) the leading man, Paul, in 5th. place, scores 46 points whilst the leading lady, Julie, in 7th., scores 44 points.
So after 4 races the state of play is
Ladies
Julie 44
Nicky 28
Tracy 27
Kate 26
Susan 25
Penny 20
Angela 19
TOTAL 189
Men
Paul 46
Ian 34
Roy 33
Trevor 21
TOTAL 134
We don’t yet have the Tittesworth result but the men will be boosted by Rod, Bill and Peter’s performances. The men have more to come. To qualify for a mug in the main event you need to run in at least six races. In the Challenge just running in one race would at this stage, guarantee a minimum score of 18 points and the men have Simon, Stephen, Ron, Ken and possibly Rob and Neil in reserve. As there are potentially more men than ladies we will have to balance up the numbers to ensure the final result looks fair.
Ian Ashcroft