County Standards - 2026 Update

County Standards For many years, a standards scheme has existed within Leicestershire for runners of all age groups to use to target race performances, and to track their improvement as they seek to improve, or maintain, their running performances from year to year.

Up until now, this scheme was set up and monitored by the Leicestershire & Rutland Athletics Network (LRAN), an organization which has now ceased to exist. As a result, the County Standards scheme needs a new home, and as the vast majority of standard claims come from within LRRL races the League has agreed to take ownership of the scheme. This ultimately includes supporting the costs of administering the scheme. We have however, wanted to review the scheme to make some changes and have recently undertaken a “vox pop” style survey with local runners, with some of the ideas getting good feedback, and others not so!

Before explaining the new rules, which can also be found here on the website, we felt it necessary to explain some of the rationale behind this move. Firstly, we are unapologetically pro-LRRL, and pro-Leicestershire and Rutland running events. We have an amazing running scene in this county, as we see from frequently sold out League races, but also have many brilliantly run events in the county by other race organisers that are not part of the League programme, some of which are run by League member clubs, or people involved within our club scene. We want to see their events succeed as much as our own, some of them are crying out for extra participant support, and if we can tweak the County Standards scheme to support them then we will. The final ruleset, which we are going to backdate to 1 January 2026 as this officially is now the point the League is taking ownership of the County Standards scheme, are listed below. These are watered down from some of the ideas raised in our “vox pop” survey following runners feedback.

• The scheme runs from 1 January to 31 December in each calendar year.

• To obtain a standard, a runner must make five qualifying times within their selected standard band in their age category in a year. If a runner changes age category within a year, then the relevant standards obtained from their age at race day can be used (eg a runner turning 40 in June 2026 can use three events from the 35-39 category before their birthday, and two events from the 40-44 category after their birthday).

• To obtain a distinction award, a runner must make nine qualifying times, with the same notes as above applying.

• To obtain a standard, at least three of the distances must be from events within the Leicestershire & Rutland region. They do not have to be LRRL races.

• To obtain a distinction, at least six of the distances must be from events within the Leicestershire & Rutland region. They do not have to be LRRL races.

• We would, in future, like to make it a requirement for runners to only choose one of the 6 mile or 10km distance due to the similarity in distances, to encourage a greater spread of distances for standard awards. However, being aware that currently there is only one 7 mile event within Leicestershire (Shepshed 7) and it is an uncommon distance elsewhere, we will put this aspiration on pause until such a time that more 7 mile events are available, if ever.

• All Parkruns within Leicestershire & Rutland will be available for claiming standards for the 5k distance. Previously it was just Abbey Park parkrun, Braunstone parkrun, Leicester Victoria parkrun and Watermead parkrun.

• With the exception of parkruns, the achievement of qualifying race times must be in recognized athletic events with accurately measured courses. You can find if a course has a measurement certificate here:- https://aukcm.org.uk/runners/

• The time must be listed on the race results (no watch times/Strava times etc), with chip time taking priority, unless a race is not chip timed in which case gun time shall be used (eg East Midlands Grand Prix events, one of which is in Leicestershire with the Harborough 5).

• For non-county races being used, races recognized as downhill on Power of 10 (eg the Loch Ness Marathon) will not count. These can be distinguished by their identifier containing the letters DH.

• To support County Championship running, we will allow standards to be claimed for the Leicestershire 10,000m track championship race. This is an accurately measured and timed race, and despite taking place outside of the county, would qualify for our purposes as a Leicestershire & Rutland event if used.

How did we get here?

We have undertaken some statistical analysis on a sample of the county standards claimed in 2025 under LRAN, with a sample size of 105.

Of this, the following data was obtained:-

Per distance:-

• 5k – 87 claims (82.9%), 78 within Leicestershire & Rutland (L&R) (74.3%)

• 5m – 91 claims (86.7%), 86 in L&R (81.9%)

• 6m – 86 claims (81.9%), 83 in L&R (79.0%)

• 10k – 97 claims (92.4%), 82 in L&R (78.1%)

• 7m – 59 claims (56.2%), 57 in L&R (54.3%)

• 8m – 70 claims (66.7%), 70 in L&R (66.7%)

• 10m – 16 claims (15.2%), 0 in L&R (0.0%) – pre-2026 no event within L&R

• HM – 71 claims (67.6%), 37 in L&R (35.2%)

• 20m – 20 claims (19.0%), 16 in L&R (15.2%)

• Marathon – 23 claims (21.9%), 0 in L&R (0.0%)

With our new ruleset, 96 (91.43%) of the claims would still have qualified, with 9 (8.57%) failing. In reality, these runners likely would have achieved a standard still by using different events that did fall within the criteria that they took part in during the year.

One element from the “vox pop” that we have dropped as it proved more controversial than envisaged, was a suggestion that all standard claims should contain a distance of 10 miles or more. Of the 105 sample size, 72 (68.6%) included a distance of 10 miles or more as their highest standard. Just 10 claims (9.5%) used 7 miles as their highest distance. Out of curiosity, we’ll undertake a similar exercise in 2026 to see if the new Hose 10 event in the League this year impacts this number in anyway, but won’t immediately plan to reintroduce this idea for now or the forseeable.

The Future

For 2027, we will look to introduce a “Gilt” sub-section for each standard category that will help bridge the gap between standards, which can be quite wide and lead to a de-motivating effect on runners who feel “stuck” within a category. This would give them a new target to work toward on their standard. Whilst the maths for this is quite straightforward, with the volume of standards it will take some time to put together, so with taking on the scheme now we’d rather get up and running with the new ruleset, and introduce this major change for next year.

We are pleased to say that Ben Benson of Huncote Harriers will continue to collate the annual standard submissions from clubs and produce the annual certificates that are awarded, the printing of which is arranged by Ian Thompson of the same club. We are very grateful to both Ben and Ian for this sterling work.

As ever, if you would like to contact us, please do so at chair@lrrl1984.co.uk.

Happy running!