Serpiesphere Virtual 5K – Week 7 (23rd to 29th May 2020)

Hello Serpies,

Thanks to the 89 Serpies who took part in last week’s Serpiesphere Virtual 5K.  Here is a quick review of Week 6 and instructions for Week 7!

The temperature in the London area climbed a little last week. This might have affected the finishing times for many of us, as we had 25 best-of-series performances, compared to 44 the week before.  The good news is the relatively hot weather didn’t seem to put off too many Serpies. So far, 43 runners have run every single race over the past 6 weeks; another 22 have only missed one week – so well done to you all.

We also continue to have new runners joining across the Serpiesphere. Maureen Seguin entered the race last week from north Wales (see below her photo taken near Maentwrog – for those Welsh Castles Relay fans out there). More importantly that was her first race since the recent birth of her child! Hopefully she and everyone else will keep running for the weeks to come.

Thanks to everyone who posted photos in our Dropbox account, please keep them coming! I will show all photos in our Saturday 11am Zoom café, with the best one picked for this weekly email.  Your photo could well be next. (Note: by uploading your photos you have given us and the Club permission to use them.) https://www.dropbox.com/request/DAXAB7cOY3l0rrJEKbKn.

 

Last week’s Virtual Podium

Congratulations to these runners for their Virtual Podium performances in the handicap race:

  1. Encarna Rodriguez – she made massive progress in her 5K time this week, having run 26:13 (handicapped time 56:43);
  2. Carol Wu – the Alpine magic in Austria continues with her second podium performance of 27:14 (handicapped time 57:59);
  3. Hilary Walker – our Club President improved her time to 43:12 to earn a place on the podium this week (handicapped time 58:27).

Also, our fastest performers of Week 5 are:

  • Fastest Male: Chris Wright – despite describing his run as ‘wheels fell off’ he did enough to retain first place with a time of 16:28;
  • Fastest Female: Tash Sheel – she improved her best time of the series to 18:27 to claim her 4th win;
  • Best age-graded performance: Andy Reeves – having narrowly missed the top spot in the past couple of weeks he finally came on top at 83.2% with a time of 17:36.

Full results here: https://www.serpentine.org.uk/rdb/showvirtual5k.php?race=13486.

Well done to everyone!

 

This week – How to submit your time

  • Enter your time before 23:59 on Friday 29nd May via this link: https://www.serpentine.org.uk/rdb/showvirtual5k.php?race=13490. Click “self-add result”, then scroll to find “Serpiesphere Virtual 5K” and choose “23 May 2020” (which includes all performances from 23rd to 29th 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. 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.
  • Submit the photo or screenshot at this link (also before 23:59 on Friday): https://www.dropbox.com/request/DAXAB7cOY3l0rrJEKbKn (this link can also be found in the same page as the “self-add result” page). Click “Choose Files” or “Choose 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).

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 next week onwards you will have a chance to win!

 

The Lockdown Championship

Quick recap of the scoring system:

  • Handicap race position: The Top Ten each week will get 20 (the winner) to 11 points (10th place). The rest will be given points in tiers – from 10 points down to 3. One point for a scratch run.
  • Net time position: Top 5 positions in men, women and age-graded performance, scratch runners included. The winner will get 5, runner up 4, down to 1 point for a 5th place finish.

Top 10 after Week 6:

Name

Score Race 1

Score Race 2

Score Race 3

Score Race 4

Score Race 5

Score Race

6

Total Score

Matt Williams

1

18

19

10

18

7

73

Christopher Wright

6

5

13

12

12

12

60

Keith Evans

1

9

10

17

17

5

59

Declan Boothe-Brennan

1

14

9

12

9

10

55

Hilary Walker

1

10

12

9

4

18

54

Catharine Sowerby

1

10

13

7

8

14

53

Natalia Delfino

1

6

17

14

3

10

51

Andrew Reeves

3

3

5

12

13

13

49

Hugh Torry

5

10

12

7

8

6

48

Carol Wu

1

9

DNR

19

DNR

19

48

 

 

 

The webpage showing the full scores is going through approval and will go live very soon – I will share the webpage on Facebook when it’s live.

 

Serpiesphere Virtual Café – Saturday 30th May

Next Saturday we will once again be at the Virtual Café at 11am 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 about the race, please contact me or one of us.

 

Happy running,

Hans Ho

Participation Representative (participation@serpentine.org.uk)

 

PS. I am honoured to be asked to write an article about virtual racing for the next edition of the Serpentimes in June. How do you feel about running the Serpiesphere Virtual 5K series, or virtual racing in general?  Drop me an email this week if you would like to share your thoughts (and don’t mind being quoted)!

Submitted: 24 May 2020

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