Craig Mottram wins handicap mile

I raced against him in that same event a couple of years ago. At the time I was probably in about 4:15 1500m condition and was off something like 110 or 120m; he was off scratch and passed me with about 500m still to go! Ran about a 3:58.x mile that evening from memory but didn't catch one of the frontmarkers who ran off 250 or so. Handicap racing is a bloody good way to improve fitness too, no tactics at all, just go as hard as possible as long as possible.

They're very high quality carnivals over the xmas-new year time on the coast of Tasmania, especially the calibre of cyclists that turn up.

Not trying to be rude, what does off scratch mean, and can you give more details about how this event works?

Good fun event for Mottram!

shizzy wrote:

Not trying to be rude, what does off scratch mean, and can you give more details about how this event works?

Good fun event for Mottram!

Running off scratch means running the full distance of the race - ie 1 mile in this case. To understand the handicaps, the distance a runner is running off is how far ahead they start - so running off 100m means that in a mile handicap that athlete will run 1509m, a runner off 260m will run 1349m etc.

Basically entrants have to state pb's, sb's/expected times on the entry forms and are handicapped appropriately to give most at least some sort of chance at placing if they run extremely well. It's a great way of getting normal club athletes and even older verteran runners to be able to race against such high quality athletes and is great fun. Great for race fitness too as you just crack it all the way trying to catch those who started ahead and hold off those chasing you. Always good crowds at these carnivals too.

This sounds like a really awesome event.

I will organize one this summer at my local track.

These used to be really popular in road racing, especially in New England from the 30's through the 50's or so, where runners would be given X amount of time head start over the 'scratch'. A 60 minute 10 mile runner would be given a 10 minute handicap over the favorite for example.

My whole club xc season is handicap racing -great fun. Our last race is a sealed handicap -we all start this one together but the handicapper allocates everyone a mark -you aren't too sure exactly what mark you have so every fraction of a second counts.

The handicap races really encourage the slower runners to keep at it. A 15min 5k runner and a 25min 5k runner may be fighting it out for line honours -makes the 25 min runner feel part of the serious action. We find plenty of the slowies really work hard and improve because of that competitive aspect that they just don't feel jogging along at the back of a race. Obviously the 15min runner gets plenty of good tough races too!!

I ran a 10k in 1984 in St Louis that did this. There were a handful of these events around.

You can make an awful lot of money a 16 year old won 4 grand at the weekend for winning the new year sprint. In scotland you win about £100 for one race win!