Serpiesphere Virtual 5K – Week 3 (25th April to 1st May 2020)

Hello Serpies,

Another great week in the Serpiesphere Virtual 5K. We now have the first ever Virtual 5K winner in our Club’s history. Let’s identify the next one in a week’s time!

In Week 1 we had 116 Serpies taking part.  I hadn’t expected there would be as many runners in Week 2.  How wrong was I – we had 125! So let’s see how many we have this week…

Many of us ran in the familiar territories of the Royal Parks (I ran in St James’s Park myself) and other great London green spaces, but we had some interesting entries last week. Among the ‘exotic’ runs were Carol Wu’s near the scenic ski village of Sankt Anton am Arlberg in Tyrol, Austria; and Jerry Lockspeiser’s 20 laps of the bumpy 250m path around his Mallorca home, which he is not allowed to leave due to the stricter lockdown measures in Spain. Charles-Everard de T’Serclaes ran a hilly sub-20 5K in front of this beautiful sunrise in southern France (see below). Well done to you all! Please email me or upload any great photos you’d like to share together with your time-distance evidence. In a time of isolation it is always nice to be reminded of inspiring locations!

Charles-Everard-south-of-France 

 

Last week’s Virtual Podium

Well done to the following runners who are on the first ever Serpiesphere 5K Virtual Podium:

  1. Nick Beale – finish time including handicap 56:43 (5K running time 25:28)
  2. Caroline Torry - 56:49 (running time 29:49)
  3. Matt Williams – 57:38 (running time 27:23)

Also, our fastest performers of Week 2 are:

  • Fastest Male: Hugh Torry – 16:55
  • Fastest Female: Michele Bryceland – 19:04
  • Best age-graded performance: Andrew Roberts – net time 20:05; age-graded percentage: 84.4%

 

This week's race

Just like last week, once you have run your 5K, please follow the steps below:

  • Enter your time before 23:59 on Friday 1st May via this link: https://www.serpentine.org.uk/rdb/showvirtual5k.php?race=13483. Click “self-add result”, then you may have to scroll to find “Serpiesphere Virtual 5K” and choose “25 Apr 2020” (which includes all performances from 25th April to 1st May).
  • Take a photo or screenshot that shows your time and distance, this can be a screenshot of your Strava / Garmin result page, or a picture of your watch. Anything that shows your time and distance would be fine.
  • Submit the photo or screenshot at this link (also before 23:59 on Friday): https://www.dropbox.com/request/DAXAB7cOY3l0rrJEKbKn (this link can be found in the same page as the “self-add result” page). Click “Choose File” or “Choose File from Computer”. You do not need a Dropbox account. This will just ask for your name (so we can correlate your performance with the time submitted) and email address (so you’ll get a confirmation of upload).

As long as the distance is a minimum of 5.00km (or 3.11 miles) and it shows a finish time, it will be accepted. Please email me if you are unable to do so.

All members who haven't done the race yet are welcome to join - you'll be a scratch runner this week so you won't be on the Podium; from the next week onwards you will have a chance to win!

 

Lockdown Championship

Just to spice things up a little more, we are thinking about creating an overall standing for the Serpiesphere Virtual 5K series. Provisionally called the “Lockdown Championship”, the scoring will be similar to the Hogshead standing in the monthly Handicap races – so both high handicap positions and fast individual performances will be rewarded. We are aware that our top runners are at a disadvantage in the handicap race. Whereas improving by a minute or two when you run 30 minutes is entirely possible, it is much harder work if you run 16 minutes! Therefore there are likely to be some tweaks to Hogshead in order to suit the Serpiesphere Virtual 5K.

We are testing different scoring systems to see what works best. The plan is to let you know how we will identify the Lockdown Champion in a week’s time. So stay tuned! Any comments on scoring are welcome – please email me.

 

Serpiesphere Virtual Café – Saturday 2nd May

Next Saturday we will once again be at the Virtual Café on Saturday morning to chat, to catch up, and to announce the next Virtual Podium. Zoom meeting details will be shared later this week.

 

Once again thanks to my co-organisers Sarah Maisey, Nic Barberis and Pete Mackintosh. Any queries or suggestions to the race (as this is still a new race), please contact me or one of us.

 

Happy running,

Hans Ho

Participation Representative (participation@serpentine.org.uk)

Submitted: 25 April 2020

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