RULE CHANGE NO. 3

Sandbagging Rule

For any race series participant who improves their handicap time by 5 minutes or more, the following will occur:

1.     Regardless of your finishing place in that run, you will be considered as if you ran a 31 minute tape time and placed accordingly.

2.     Your placement in that run WILL COUNT as one of your 3 scoring races for consideration in the overall Top Ten finishing. On any subsequent race after the first race penalized where further improvement occurs, this same penalty will be enforced.

3.     The race director has full discretion to enforce the rule.

4.     If you do not finish a race you will be awarded last place.

Therefore, you are encouraged to run/walk/jog/wog to your best ability at each Summer Series race.  Running below your ability level for your qualifying run and then running hard for subsequent runs to move up in the ranking is Sandbagging and you will be penalized.  We realize that people accidentally sandbag, i.e. started the event untrained, injured, or not feeling well and then improve substantially, but the sandbagging rules applies to all to weed out the participants who intentionally try to take advantage of the handicap system.

In the past there was a 20% sandbagging rule and it was far to all. The 5 minute rule is not because anyone slower then 25 minutes is treated unfairly. 5 minutes is 20% of 25 minutes. So anyone faster than 25 minutes actually benefits from the rule change.

Anyone slower than 25 minutes is penalized:

• 5/30 = 16.7%
• 5/40 = 12.5%
• 5/50 = 10%

Those who changed the rule are basically saying that anyone over 25 minutes was:

"untrained, injured, or not feeling well and then improve substantially"


Well last year according to the Best Scratch Times for the entire summer, only 250 of 509 males who ran the event broke 25 minutes. So over half the males who ran last summer were "untrained, injured, or not feeling well and then improve substantially".
On the female side only 64 of the 480 females who ran the event at least once broke 25 minutes. So over 86% of the females who ran last summer were "untrained, injured, or not feeling well and then improve substantially". 


Bottom line is the change from 20% across the board to 5 minutes, negatively impacts 
68% of those who ran last year and benefits 32%.


Is that fair?