Performance Event 4: SOC Regional 06/11/11: PPS Scores

The November Classic on Sunday was our fourth Performance Event, and what a great event it was. With bright sunshine, a beautiful runnable beech forest with few major paths, and genuine long course planning, it was about as good as it gets in the South of England. The club had 28 runners on the day, with a further 9 who had entered but were unable to compete. There was a very large turnout at the event, approaching 900 competitors in total, with a full 180 on the Blue course.

On the Blue course, the best tactic on most legs seemed to be to run on rough compass to pick up one of the (semi-)open areas, then angle in to the control from there. Trying to run on rough compass for a full 1k leg was a novel experience for me, and not wholly successful. Another first was taking 2:47 for a short leg and receiving a split position of 165^th! However, it is interesting to see that most people made one or more mistakes at some point round a course like this, and even many of the good guys came unstuck somewhere. The change of terrain to rough plantations seemed to cause problems for many people in the last part of the course.

With SOC posting the results through to the BO website so quickly, I’ve been able to calculate the PPS scores earlier than usual. There was a real spread of scores this time, with the improvers dominating. Some of the %s are extremely high, with the best scores coming from those with few previous scores. The Hot ROD Awards for Performance Event 4 go to:

 The full PPS scores for this event can be found at PPS_PE4 Results.

Gill’s score is quite astonishing, and is by far the highest % we’ve seen in the scheme since its trial introduction a year ago. She had just three previous ranking scores, and scored higher than any before, so well done to her.

 A Mention in Despatches goes to the other 100%+ finishers: Tim Booth [an amazing 123% yet still not quite reaching the podium!], Bryce Gibson, Steve Bouch, Alex Moore, Gill Bennett, Janet Gibson, Lenka Strakova, and Dan Straka.  To get over 100% at a high quality event like the November Classic is an excellent achievement. At the moment, the scheme does seem to be starting to be dominated by the improvers, those who have few previous results (Debb also had 3, Simon had 5 previous results). Perhaps for next season we’ll have to consider how to balance the system a little to keep the scores closer together for all members.

The Performance League is steadily setting down. We still have Simon Turton, David Jukes and Keith Ellis in the pole positions, with Ian Hudson now rising to fourth. There are still two Performance Events remaining, so more members will be reaching the ‘best three scores’ threshold soon.

This event was also the Final of the Performance Cup. The finalists were Clive Jenkins, Graham Farhall, and Annika Hermik. I am pleased to announce that the winner of the inaugural Performance Cup is Annika Hermik. This was an unusual final in that Clive and Graham did not enter the event! Thus Annika just had to complete the race to be declared the winner, which she duly did, though it seems she had a tough time getting round the Blue. This mini-competition proved the two well-known sporting maxims “In order to win it, you first have to be in it” and “To finish first, first you have to finish”. In this respect, Annika is a very worthy winner, having completed and won through all three knock-out rounds. Well done, Annika! We will certainly run this competition again during the Spring season.

Our next Performance Event is also the Club Championship, to be held at the BADO event at Pamber on 20^th November. We will be using PPS scoring for the Club Championship, so everyone should have an equal chance of winning their class. I hope we have a large turnout of members on the day. Pre-entry is available and might be advisable, it will save the queues at registration. See you there.