Cheshire County Road Running Grand Prix
A few years ago the Cheshire County Road Race Permit secretary, Adrian Thiemicke, introduced a road running grand prix in the County. In this, 7 established open road races in the county were chosen each year for the GP, e.g. Chester Spring 5 mile and Sutton 6 10K organised by West Cheshire AC. In 2008 this increased to 8 with the addition of a 10 mile race. A separate result for each race in the series is produced by Adrian for those athletes running for Cheshire clubs and can be found on the Cheshire AA website.
As with the Borders League, it is designed to encourage members of Cheshire clubs to support races in Cheshire which are largely organised by Cheshire clubs. There are awards to winning clubs and individuals at the end of each season.
In addition and alongside there is the;
National Endurance Running Handicap Scheme
The Cheshire Road Running GP series has been used in the last 3 years as one of the pilot schemes to evaluate a novel endurance running handicap scheme which was invented by George Bunner of Frodsham. Essentially the scheme produces a handicap number for each athlete based on their recent road running performances over different distances. This number, analogous to a golf handicap, then provides a time allowance for a handicap race, the time allowance increasing as the distance of the event increases. Handicap results are published to all Cheshire clubs taking part in the GP series and also found on the same page of the Cheshire AA website.John Driscoll of West Cheshire AC is working on the scheme and maintains a performance data base for Cheshire club members, which is used by the handicap scheme. This is beginning to provide a detailed breakdown of endurance participation and standards in Cheshire clubs.