UKA results recording

Hi,Not sure if this is an old topic but is everyone aware that if you enter an event that hasn't a runbritain license your result will not be accepted by  UKA.

A couple of times recently I have entered events and found my times will not be counted. I can accept that 'Fun Runs' are excluded but high profile events like the recent LIchfield Half Marathon?

This event has a course measurement certicate interestingly done by a UKA approved organisation. It has 'chip' timing, which I guess is about as accurate as you can get for mass events.

Perhaps you should be notified when you do an online entry that the event is not licensed to runbritain/UKA. I do realise it doesnt have to be but it seems a little unfair that a result cannot be accepted particularly with well organised high profile events.

I would interested in other runners thoughts

yep, long known problem amongst competitive types

I was unlcuky enough to do my 3 qualifying 10k times (36 min or under) on non UKA licensed events. Now, the pb is more important than getting onto some rankings list, but still annoying.

However, they've now ridiculously loosened the qualifying times so that pretty much anyone who trains well can get into the rankings, with the marker now being 40mins for 10k (1hr 30 for a half, instead of 1hr 20)

It's slightly farcicial, because whereas you'd have say, 1,500 people making the 10k qualifying time last year in total, you now have 6,000 or so having met the new one, 1/3 of the way into the year!

From what I understand, more and more races are going down the ARC route for the purposes of insurance cover because of increasing costs and H&S bureacracy associated with UKA, and with Power of 10 being tied up with UKA, ARC races simply don't get a mention.  (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Knowing your own achievements (and boasting about them on here, obviously  ) is the most important thing but it does seem a shame that there isn't some central athletics database that you can turn to in order to get definitive, comprehensive rankings, and athletic records for your competitors.  I used to naively think that's what Po10 was, but presumably with the way things are going, it's only going to become less authoritative?

I can understand why they do it even if I don't like it. It can be frustrating if for example like me you're slightly obsessed with improving your runbritain handicap and you go and smash your PB on a chip timed charity event on a previously measured course. Especially when you consider that a parkrun - technically not a race - still gets counted yet could have been timed by officials of such calibre as, well, me.

For this reason I confess that I mainly enter UKA races, and only consider non UKA races if there's something really particular about the event - eg the location - that I really want to run there.

Although not always explicitly stated when an event is not UKA licensed, you can be confident that if there is no race entry discount for affiliated members then it is not a UKA race. If there is an affiliated discount then you might still want to check whether it's a UKA race, just in case it is an ARC event, assuming it bothers you.

Whilst runbritainrankings won't let you claim results in domestic non-UKA races, you can at least write such results into the "About" section of your profile on thepowerof10.info so that you have a record visible in the same place as your UKA results. If you're handy with HTML then you can even format it the same as the main data so that it looks 'official'

i'm mildly interested in power of 10, obviously knowing the whole "Only UKA events" fascism.

Does make me laugh when people use it as some kind of bible of events. For tracks tuff it's probably much more effective, but for road races not at all.

For instance, there's a guy locally who's probably beaten me about 40+ times over the years. According to Power of 10, our head to head is something like 6-0!!

Run Britain is utter pony though. How can you handicap a race. Who judges if a course is harder than another one? Every race report I've ever read has contained differences of opinion on undulation/hills, hot/fine.

A straight times only ranking system for every certified race in the country would be good. At the end of the day all that matters is the course being properly measured.

As for park runs, I've heard of occasions where they've bungled the results, and asked runners to complete their own! These have then been submitted.

Not quite thoroughly accurate!

With administration from UKA getting worse more and more events are moving to ARC. It kind of renders the whole power of 10 meaningless when a significant proportion of events are not included in it. 

To play the devil's advocate, why on earth should UKA/PoT catalogue results from ARC races?

ARC have taken a (possibly) significant slice of UKA's income from races, and haven't (AFAIK) set up similar databases.
Everything cost money - websites and databases don't "just happen" - and UKA have limited resourses.

Perhaps we should ask ARC what they're doing about it.

Stevie G . wrote (see)

A straight times only ranking system for every certified race in the country would be good. At the end of the day all that matters is the course being properly measured.

 

In an ideal world...

oi.you wrote (see)

To play the devil's advocate, why on earth should UKA/PoT catalogue results from ARC races?

ARC have taken a (possibly) significant slice of UKA's income from races, and haven't (AFAIK) set up similar databases.
Everything cost money - websites and databases don't "just happen" - and UKA have limited resourses.

Perhaps we should ask ARC what they're doing about it.

Good point.  I certainly wouldn't expect UKA to catalogue all ARC results since they're effectively the competition.  Maybe if there was enough demand for it, a separate body would find it worthwhile to pool results into a central UK database??

...and I've just educated myself.  ARC do have a ranking record on their website.  (Our own club's 10 mile race is ARC affiliated and shows up there.) Naturally it's pretty small compared to the Po10 equivalent...

ARC Rankings.

seems like the ARC rankings are designed simply to narrowly keep me out by 20-30seconds!

Bit harsh when only 100-200 people fit the bill! for 2011

Thanks for the link Phil - must admit I hadn't seen that, mostly 'coz I hadn't looked of course.
I'll have a better look later to see what's in it. One of my club mates is a bit of a stato and may not be best pleased with another system to track.

I had been wondering if individual race organisers, or ARC collectively, might "sponsor" PoT to get their results included. Some race organisers and competitors might still prefer a single databse.

oi.you wrote (see)

To play the devil's advocate, why on earth should UKA/PoT catalogue results from ARC races?

ARC have taken a (possibly) significant slice of UKA's income from races, and haven't (AFAIK) set up similar databases.
Everything cost money - websites and databases don't "just happen" - and UKA have limited resourses.

Perhaps we should ask ARC what they're doing about it.

It could be argued that ARC have not taken a slice of UKA's income, but rather UKA gave it away with their poor administration, overly complex bureaucracy and basically using road running as a cash cow to finance everything else. It was UKA increasing race certification & insurance costs substantially for no extra return that was one of the triggers that caused ARC to be created in the first place. You say UKA have limited resources - they actually receive millions each year but give practically nothing to road running. The reality is they're only really interested in Track & Field so that's where the money goes. I understand this as they don't get judged on how many Brits win road races but on how many medals they win in the athletics stadium. It’s more the fact that they are legally still in charge of road running but do practically nothing for it. Even when under pressure to do something all they did was create a committee which as I recall was completely dominated by commercial race directors, people who are direct competitors for many clubs who organise races. For most road running clubs the only thing UKA provide is the insurance that gives the £2 discount for affiliated runners to enter races, and they provide absolutely nothing else. To be fair, most road running clubs probably don’t want or ask for much more, but we could do without the red tape we have to deal with to affiliate, organise races, register runners who change clubs etc, and we could do without UKA pretending to care but doing nothing. They should either do something for road running or hand it over to another body.

Well said BOTF

I'm not an apologist for UKA, and wouldn't want to dispute any of your points. The reasons for ARC's creation and growth are somewhat beside the point. The fact remains that ARC now recieve money that would once have gone to UKA, so UKA have less now than they might otherwise have. So I'm not surprised by their actions.
I've not seen anything from UKA to explain their exclusion of ARC race results. They may have other reasons than the one I offered.

Hi All, Thanks for all your views - for or against. I realise its not just me, but the way our sport is organised. For my part I was only realy interested in my time being ratified. I am not interested in a prize or a runbritain ranking, although it has been pointed out to me that a little presentation ceremony for the winners including the veterans would have been nice (Hint Lichfield Half Marathon organisers!) I suggested in my original post that if Runners World on line entries could make it clear (by asking organisers) if an event has a licence and to whom. It would make it transparent to us runners what we are letting our selves in for and not biased towards any particular body. If its a fun run then we would know and if licensed by ARC or UKA we would also be aware. Further it might encourage runners to become aware of the issues discussed in  these posts. Do others think this would help?

Part of the rules for holding a certified event I believe are that the documentation displays the UKA or ARC logo, permit number and course accuracy certificate number where applicable. Trouble is you usually have all the documentation in place before you have the licence. I guess though as with many things, if enough people consider it important then more and more organisers will include the information. At the moment I suspect it's a long way down the list of priorities.

at the end of the day your own personal pb is what matters.

Only the anoraks who liket to stalk their rivals really use power of 10. I like it when they quote what their rivals have done, ignoring the fact that half the races probably aren't even on there.

Out of my 110 or so races, there's a trace of about 10 on power of 10...but that's half down to non ARC and half down to not qualifying..

Hi Malcolm, sorry, your thread has been just a teensy bit hijacked.

Once upon a time, said the old fart, the only way to enter a race was to have an entry form on a bit of real paper. That form had to say, and probably still does, if the race was held according to UKA rules. As BOTF says the race permit will state which org has issued the cert - but that's only applicable on race day when it must (should?) be on display.

Sadly, there is no such requirement with on-line race entry systems. This year our club's race used 3 different on-line entry sytems - RW, RunBritain & Active, and there was (AFAIK) no requirement to say who (if anyone) had issued a permit for the race.
to echo BOTF's comment, if it's important to you make sure that the Race Director knows this. All too often they're working in a vacuum, trying to guess what it is people want.

Googled this as I was looking for an answer as more and more races are considered non-official by the UKA. Which is fine for whatever petty inter-body issues they all have with each other, but as runners we have choices on what races we do, infact more and more choice for events in the same areas on the same day, so if given the choice of doing one thats UKA (mainly as im interested in the difficulty ratings they use which can sometimes turn you from being disappointed in a performance, to realising it was on a harder course). And most of us are motivated by continuous improvement, and obviously the better you get, the smaller the improvements are, so having the runbritain data can help with that....

Personally im happy I ran an 88 min half on sunday....but annoyed it doesnt get put on my score on runbritain. Moreso because parkruns are counted, and when I was livng in the US, I could submit the results for races I did out there (obviously not UKA affiliated) and they were accepted! So in context, the Maidenhead Half wasnt good enough for UKA, but the San Jose Half was.

Anyway, if you want to know if a race is "official" or not, you can check the runbritain events calender. If its listed with a race number on there, its official. If its not, you wont get the score. Looks like many races that were UKA in 2011 have decided to go ARC for 2012.

http://runbritain.com/events/

Wayne, until recently, you had to hit 1:18 or better to even get your half marathon on power of 10 even if it was a UKA event. And it had to be on the gun time, not chip.

Now they've wildly opened the floodgates to give rankings times, and also allow the chip time.

Therefore, the head to head facility some people use is slightly flawed as you're comparing chip time, so will show you lost to someone you may have beaten.