Bytown Walkers Record of Achievement

Real Track and Field Statisticians should avert their eyes: this list is for Bytown Walkers only!

The lists below are not so much “rankings” as “records of achievement”. Discussions on technicalities take a distant second place to the celebration of people (who may not have come to the club thinking of themselves as athletes) having the determination and plain guts to “lace ‘em up”, “get out there”, and “just do it”.

Basically, if you are a club member, and you remember a time when you showed up where you were told to, somebody said “go”, and you progressed pretty much as fast as you could until somebody said “stop”, your exploit is listed. You were in a race, and good for you. If you were the last to finish, you still beat everyone else in the world who wasn’t there!

You did so under a number of different circumstances; and you might be told that the gods of track and field are weeping at the liberties you took with their rules. Well, actually not. Whatever the occasion, you always competed legitimately: you went the advertised distance, and you did nothing that would have gained an unfair advantage over others competing under the same circumstances. In unjudged races, “common-sense” judging applies when Roger is watching! Departures from IAAF rules are accepted, but the method of progression must be clearly recognizable as walking.

So some of the gods’ administrators might stamp their little feet in annoyance, and wonder how beans can possibly be counted under such conditions.

But we are confident that the gods themselves will smile with satisfaction. “When I race, I feel His pleasure,” said the devout missionary and monumental sprinter Eric Liddell in the great movie “Chariots of Fire”. More secularly, the equally great Mohammed Ali once said “T’ain’t braggin’ if you can do it!”

These lists prove that you did it. So start braggin’ (and plannin’ to do it faster next time).

Notations

j	judged race
u	unjudged race
t	track race
r	road race
i	indoors
@	time en route to a longer distance
a	position in age group in a race where the overall classification is not provided in official results
m	mixed race (judged). The first number indicates the position in the same gender, the second figure indicated the position overall. If “m” is used with only one number, no-one of the other gender was ahead.
ru	position includes runners
** / ++	unique circumstances explained at the end of the section
( IV)	Roman numerals in superscript indicate the approximate difference in minutes between official time and “chip time”. “Chip time” (starting when the athlete actually crosses the startline) is often given as a courtesy in large races when it is not possible for everyone to leave the start when the gun sounds. But it is unofficial by all the sport’s rules. “Chip time”, for example, does not adjust your finishing position. Many of the people ahead of you could well have been slower; they just started sooner. So if your Roman numeral is too big for your liking, get up closer to the start - everyone shuffles until the course clears anyway!

 

Bytown Rankings 2005

Rankings