You may have seen the exciting news that the UK has announced the first Age Group focused series for 2022. But, getting your head around new events and navigating the information that has been put out can be tricky, so we thought we’d take some time to share what we know so far!

The Age Group Series

For the first time EVER, Spartan is bringing more focus to age-group racing and giving us an entire series just for Age group. This is a great step from Spartan towards showing that age group racing should be taken seriously. With lots of Team Grit athletes competing in age group races - we think it’s going to be a really exciting year.

The UK Regional Series for Age Group is made up of 4 races. As always it favours athletes who prefer the longer distances with 2/4 of the races being Beast distance so it’s time to make sure you’re comfortable doing a half marathon with most of the obstacle roster Spartan has to offer.

Interestingly for the first time ever, we have got TWO series races on back to back days at the London West trifecta weekend. That’s going to make training interesting so you’ll want to make sure you’re planning accordingly, get used to performing on the second day and being ready to wake up after a hard Beast and take on a Sprint! (If you are interested in talking training you can check out our personal coaching and OCR group training plan or drop us a message).

You’ve then got just shy of a month to recover (much better than the way races were squeezed together in 2021) before you head to Wales for what we know will be a hilly race! From what we’ve heard in whisperings… the Wales Beast will also be a qualifier for the Spartan European Champs in October.

The final race of the series will be at Marston Lodge in the Midlands on Sunday 17th of July, finishing with the only Super of the series.

The Finer Details

As always, there are a few finer details that we need to note. The most important one that we think will impact most people is the fact that to take part in the series you MUST attend all four races. Last year this was not an issue and due to the limited numbers in some age groups, we saw many people in the overall top 10 (and even hitting podiums) who had missed one or two races. This will not be the case this year as you will have to attend all to be in with a chance to win. We see both points of view on this one. On one hand, it makes sense to ensure you get commitment from your racers - those who are dedicated are then rewarded. But, on the flip side, life doesn’t always work out like that and if you’re going to reward points for each race then letting the points speak for themselves would also show you those who are truly committed. Plus many people are dealing with race rollovers from COVID cancellations which is going to make this tricky. We have already seen a clash with Race Race Dirty Weekend on the first Spartan race and the Wales race clashes with OCR Euro Champs so there are going to be some tough decisions to make and we fear that there could be some empty podium spots which is a real shame.

Each race will receive the same weighting, so the Sprint will get you the same points as the Beasts, you are not rewarded more points due to the fact it is a longer race, which we think is a fair way to do it.

Some other more admin things to note, you must use the same name and contact details to ensure your results are pulled correctly (they had some admin errors last year which led to the wrong representation of winners) and you must also sign up for an Age Group race for it to count (this means you can’t jump into an open race, do well, then decide you want it to count for Age group).

The Point Scoring

Ok, let’s be honest, the point score for age group is always a bit of a minefield. One thing we thought was really rubbish in 2021 was the total lack of sharing/celebrating these points throughout the series. Two of our athletes took podium spots for the overall series and missed their moment to shine collecting their trophy because they had no idea and we’ve heard many similar stories. Unless you were prepared to do some pretty arduous maths throughout the series to track your own, and others, points… it was near impossible to keep track!

To keep it clear, we are going to pull the information on point scores directly from the Spartan website.

All races are scored using a 1,000 point system. Points are assigned based on an athlete's final place and their gender, within their specified age group category.
Points are calculated using the following formula.
1st Place Age Group Finishers Time (Minutes)/Your Finish Time (Minutes) x 1000 = Total Points Score
Example:

1st Place Age Group Time - 60:00 Minutes
Your Time - 72:00 Minutes
60/72 x 1000 = 833 Points

Competitors ranked below 1,000 places in their Age Group will not earn any points.

We’re yet to see any age group with more than 100 people, let alone 1000, so that last point is pretty mute, but what it does mean is that the points are set up for you to focus on your best possible time. We think this is the best way to do it as the age group fields in the UK are still growing and they can be pretty small (we’re talking less than 5 people for some races, especially in the w0men’s side). That means that if you’re in a small field and you’re pretty set in your position early on, it’s still worth giving it your all and running hard to try and get the best time possible!

Prizes & Podiums

The information for this is currently a bit thin on the ground and from listening to Steve Hammond discuss the USA Age Group Series, it’s clear they’re still working some things out. Spartan UK has said there will be:

£35,000 in non-cash prizes will be presented to the top 3 males and females in each age group, along with a special edition Regional Series Age Group delta award.

From listening to Steve it seems that the top 3 OVERALL winners will be awarded these prizes at the end of the series but it has not yet been decided if there will be prizes for individual races. A good pod from The Running Public broke this down for the US so we thought it might be helpful to do so here. The UK currently has 10 age group categories with men’s and women which means 20 different sets of prizes to give out. That means that if we split this down, that leaves us with £1750 to be split between 1st, 2nd and 3rd per age group per gender. For example, £1750 shared between the podium spots of men’s 18-24. At our best guess, (this is not confirmed) we’d assume this will be further split into £1000 for first, £500 for second and £250 for 3rd - IF they save the pot for the OVERALL winners of the series… which the above reads like they will.

Regarding trophies - the ‘delta award’ refers to the triangle you may have seen the elite’s getting and the same one that was given to age group racers for the series win this year. (You can see our athlete Jen repping hers!) Steve mentions that it ‘would be nice’ if they gave these out for each individual race but seeing as there are age group medals this year that have already been handed out in Saudi Arabia this weekend we’d say it’s more likely that they will stick to previous formats and do age group podiums and medals for each race then an overall delta for the winner.

So, until more information drops, that’s about what we know. Overall we think it’s a really exciting step forward and we are STOKED that a number of our athletes are keen to take on the challenge this year, we’ll be there cheering them on!

If you have any questions or thoughts, drop a comment below or feel free to drop us an email or message on IG to talk training and racing!