White Horse Relay

Proposed committee

1. Finding and organising Starters, Recorders and the necessary marshalling equipment including signage. Note: the teams themselves are required to provide the marshals (see Rules)
2. Obtaining and distributing water. Points of distribution are the end of each leg and mid point of the 5 legs over 6 miles.
3. Finding a headquarters for the event and liaising with the owner.
4. Obtaining prizes.
5. Obtaining police permission (and help, if necessary)
6. Obtaining other permissions:
   1. Local farmers / stables
   2. Parish Clerks
   3. British Waterways Board (for use of the the canal towpath on leg 2)
7. Parking and Car parks. Maybe the necessity to use fields in certain locations as some of the parking facilities I found last time were very small.
8. Publicity - and leaflets distributed by all runners who attend races
9. Risk Assessment and revising descriptions of course routes
10. Obtaining Race Numbers (Running Bath would provide these at no charge)

Other comments and suggestions following the aborted 2008 event

Run the event in September

• Dates of other relays
• Green Belt - 23-24 May 2009
• South Downs Relay - 13 June 2009
• Ridgeway - 15 June 2008 (2009 date still to be announced)
• Welsh Castles - 13-14 June 2009
• Cotswold - 27 June 2009

Reasons for lack of support and how to overcome that:

• Each runner to run twice - Whole day event? - for me that was positive
  it's more fun, keeps the team together.
• Insufficient publicity? - publish in Runners World and Running Diary
• Announced date too late? - Publish date as soon as we decide to go ahead again
• Is asking for 7 runners for a team too much for most clubs? - I doubt it.
• Marshalling duties? - see rules - Welsh Castles operates the same system, Cotswold has no marshals.
• Course not well enough described (a criticism raised at Committee meeting): Solution: members rerun route and improve the descriptions. (Risk Assessment runs)

What other reasons were there?

Possible other suggestions:

Each runner to run only once - but this requires 14 members to a team - How would small clubs cope, e.g. Calne

10 runners to a team - run how you like (but no two consecutive legs) e.g. 6 runners run 1 leg each, 4 runners run 2 legs each.

Run the event as a series: (1, 2 or 3 legs one weekend, repeated until 14 legs run) (Cost of Ambulance?)

Reduce the number of legs by missing out legs - rather defeats the object of the White Horse Relay

Combine legs - too dangerous - this would mean crossing busy roads - the police might help but probably not.

Would anyone like to add to this list?

Suggestions for change / improvement.

If we were to run the White Horse Relay again, I suggest the following:

It appears that one reason that teams were not interested was that each runner had to run twice although some people like the idea. Another reason was probably that we didn't start our publicity early enough.

My suggestion is:

Teams may consist of up to 14 runners, (that is they can consist of 7 runners who run twice, 10 runners of whom 4 run twice and six who only run once) but that scoring will be based on the number of runners in a team and the position each runner finishes in each stage, that is: At each stage runners will be awarded points: 1 for the first finisher, 2 for the second finisher, 3 for the 3rd finisher, etc.

Each team will have points added for the number of runners in a team, that is if there are only 7 runners in a team, the team will have 7 point added. If there are 14 runners in a team, the team will have 14 points added. This is done to reflect the advantage of running with as few members to a team as possible. The winning team will be the team with the least number of points.