December 8, 2024
Half Marathon, 10K & 5K Races

Reggae Runners Negril Challenge

Dan Cumming and Larry Savitch have been at it again.  OK, maybe I encouraged them ‘a little bit’.  Together they ‘schemed up’ the Reggae Runners Negril Challenge to add a little extra to Reggae Marathon this December 1.

In the first Reggae Runners Half Marathon Challenge back in May of this year Larry Savitch emerged victorious.  He not only won a pair of Puma Faas running shoes, a 1st place medal and a 6-pack of Red Stripe, he got bragging rights.  Now in Negril this December 1 he gets to defend his title in the new Reggae Runners Negril Challenge.  Challenge on and you’re invited to participate.  Here’s how it will work (thanks Dan):

Concept: In order that anyone can participate, including those that may be suffering an injury and unable to hit some kind of PB, and to be able to include anyone regardless of which of three events they run, please consider this Reggae Runners Negril Challenge.  The basic idea is to know yourself. It will not matter which event is chosen or how old, fit, healthy etc, each person is because each Reggae Challenger will set a personal target, based on their personal status at the time of the races and then try to hit it without aid of technological devices. But, Low Impact will make it no less difficult.   Here’s how I see the ‘rules’:

Entrants:

  • Anyone willing to participate, INCLUDING (and maybe particularly) good natured trash talking on social media or via blog sites.
  • Must be registered in Reggae Marathon, Reggae Half Marathon or Reggae 10K on December 1, 2012
  • Male, Female, Old, Young, In-Between

Event:

  • First, after registering for the chosen race, each entrant must register a predicted official finish time (details later)
    • All Reggae races are chip timed, so the predicted time is to be the actual net time taken to complete the event, as reported by the official timer as “chip time”
    • Scoring will be based on seconds off the predicted time, plus or minus.
    • The winner will be the challenger who comes closest to the prediction.
    • Each Reggae Challenger agrees to forego all forms of timing/pacing including watches, gps devices, hour glasses, egg timers, metronomes, sun dials, calendars and similar.
      • Each participant will run the event to the best of current ability, finishing as normal (ie no waiting in the finish chute

        until your time comes up!)

      • After all Challengers finish, results will be compared to predictions and hopefully a clear winner list will result.

Further Discussion:

With this system, anyone can participate and there is no need for age-grading or other mathematical systems to cross-compare results from one event to another.

We may want to discuss whether a second in the 10K is the same as in the marathon or half. In broad terms the half is twice as long as the 10K and the marathon four times.  The potential for inaccuracy (on % basis) grows with time on the road and notwithstanding the following, is probably not actually linear.  We may wish to consider that 10K’ers work in seconds, that for the half, the equivalent is 2 seconds and for the full marathon, the equivalent is 4 seconds.  So, let’s say I predict 60 minutes for 10K and do 59:59 – that is one second.  If I predict 2:00:00 for the half and do 1:59:58, that would be the same, and likewise 4:00:00 for the marathon with a 3:59:56 finish – same.  In simple terms it comes down to seconds off prediction, divided by 1, by 2 and 4.

This is about bragging rights, but some prizes will be nice too (working on that).

Well, what do you think?  Sounds like a plan.  Now all we have to do is figure out how to make it work.  But hey, Dan is a ‘Seasoned Runner’…I’m sure he’ll figure something out between now and Reggae Marathon December 1.

Until next time…

Reggae Marathon RunninGuy (aka Sugar ‘Tuff Gong’ Bong)

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For more information check the Reggae Marathon Web Site.  

To register now click here for the Reggae Marathon Registration Page.

Click here for more details on Reggae Marathon’s Abe Issa Award for Excellence.

Photo courtesy of Errol Anderson Photography.

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