Cheshire County Road Running Grand Prix
In 2003 the Cheshire County Road Race Permit secretary, Adrian Thiemicke, introduced a road running grand prix in the County. In this initial year, six established open road races in the county were chosen for the GP. The races were over a variety of distances from 5K to half marathon, two of them being the Chester Spring 5 mile and Sutton 6 10K organised by West Cheshire AC. In 2004 eight races were picked and then from 2005 seven, the number increased again to eight in 2008 after the addition of a 10 mile race in the county.
A separate result of each race in the series is produced by Adrian for athletes from participating Cheshire clubs. The results from the current year along with previous years can be found on the Cheshire AA website.
As with the Borders League, the GP is designed to encourage members of affiliated clubs to compete. In this instance Cheshire clubs to support races in Cheshire which are usually 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 since 2006 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.
