Updated Wednesday 25 September at 2359.
These are the results from the 6th London City Race.


Analysis

Survey

T-shirts

Our remaining stock of T-shirts sold out extremely quickly on the day of the race. If you missed out and are interested in ordering a 2013 London City Race t-shirt, please e-mail city.race.tshirts (@) gmail.com by the end of Monday 30 September. If we have sufficient interest, we will contact you with details of how to place your order.

Race photos

Thanks to all photographers for their excellent pictures from the race!

Results and Splits

Course    
1. Men's Elite Results Splits
2. Women's Elite Results Splits
3. Men's Open Results Splits
4. Women's Open Results Splits
5. Men's Vets (40+) Results Splits
6. Women's Vets (40+) Results Splits
7. Men's Super Vets (50+) Results Splits
8. Women's Super Vets (50+) Results Splits
9. Men's Ultra Vets (60+) Results Splits
10. Women's Ultra Vets (60+) Results Splits
11. Juniors (16-) Results Splits
12. Children (12-) Results Splits
13. Newcomers Results Splits

Officials' Comments

Controller (David Rosen, SROC)

I enjoyed working with SLOW on this 6th London City Race. Vince and his team now have plenty of experience and that meant that preparations proceeded smoothly, although a few of the permissions were only finalised in the last few weeks. The excellent map provided a good basis for Ollie O’Brien to plan courses with plenty of variation. The area is not particularly intricate but he did well to present runners with some good challenges and the less technical legs had the compensation of nice scenery.

Thanks very much to Tim Pribul who provided vital assistance in checking the controls on the morning – I was on my bike but even so I couldn’t have got round them all in time.

Organiser (Vince Roper, SLOW)

The plan for the city race is always to bring in some changes each year. Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs have always been a place where SLOW has wanted to hold the city race, but until this year we couldn't get permissions, due to other events taking place, so we were finally pleased that this year the canary wharf management company has allowed us to run the race on their land. Hopefully we will be back there sometime in the future.

I hope you all had an enjoyable race and enjoyed the mixture of skyscrapers, docks, parks and housing areas along with a lot of fast running. And hopefully a lot of you managed to visit some of the London Open Houses or watch the cycling after the race

As usual the race couldn't have happened without a lot of time being spent on the organisation of it. A special mention must be made to Ollie for planning and David for controlling. And of course many thanks to the usual team leaders of Gordon, Don and Andy backing myself up and making my job a lot easier. Along with these, many thanks to over 90 club members for volunteering their help throughout the day from working in the assembly to manning many of the road crossings and other marshalled areas out on the course, all these helped to ensure a smoothly run event

I would also like to thank Cliff bars for their continuing support with free bars to all the runners and Ultra -sport for their prizes for the juniors and newcomer winners along with all the landowners who gave us permission

On a final note, there are a few items of lost property please email london (@) cityrace.org if you have lost anything

I and all the members of SLOW look forward to welcoming you back to the city race next year

Planner (Oliver O'Brien, SLOW)

After five years of basing the race in The City, I was finally able to fulfil my ambition of urban orienteering in London's other commercial capital, Canary Wharf, after Vince successfully negotiated permission to run in the vast and impressive private estate. To make it a full length race, using the rest of the Isle of Dogs was also key. Remo of Rem Maps, and occasional SLOW member, worked very long hours throughout February to produce the huge (four square kilometre) map. It was so big that fitting it back-to-back on an RA3 sheet proved to be quite a challenge.

I hope everyone enjoyed most of their courses. Only the elites got to visit Limehouse, which offered the most technical legs of the whole map, but in a relatively small and distant area. The Canary Wharf section was not as technical but offered several good route-choice legs and a nice multi-level section. If you looked up from the map, you may have also noticed the huge skyscrapers above your head here. Accessing the rest of the Isle of Dogs then involved, for most people, a big “which way around the water” leg which in retrospect involved a bit too much dead running – although again with great views across the water. After the map turn, most courses went generally east through various housing estates, many visiting a (rather muddy) beach, fulfilling another ambition of having a leg on the Thames Foreshore - it’s always been high tide during previous editions of the race. The city farm was also another personal favourite area, with sheep and llamas – and a big gun - framed against a skyscraper backdrop. Finally, a penultimate control in Island Gardens for many courses afforded a dramatic view across the River Thames, that so distinctively framed the map to Maritime Greenwich.

Course lengths weren’t quite perfect – the Women’s Open ended up a little long due to its lengthy section in Canary Wharf, and the Men’s Elite (I had always wanted to plan a 10km straight line race) should have had more controls, so that short legs could add more variety. Times were also a little fast on the day, but my legs had certainly had enough by the end of my run (which I sneaked in at the very end of the start block).

No bridge openings (my biggest worry), vandalised controls, surprise landowners, falling rocks, late hangings or accidentally open gates this year! The biggest issue was upset scaffolders at one control – due a break in communication. In the end, they decided to come back later.

SLOW is a pretty efficient race organising machine, with a core team of 10 and 90 other volunteers – thank you all. I didn’t make it easy for them, with a complex Event Centre/finish layout, and a (very scenic) main start a good 3km away. But all I needed to do on the day was coordinate control hanging and course marshals, and everything else fell into place. Thank you also to David Rosen, our controller, who offered clear, pragmatic and concise advice thoughout. With over 1100 finishers on the day, and a multitude of permissions and logistics problems, putting on races like this is not easy, but it’s great to see people enjoying their day. The popularity of the event with overseas runners (over 300 this year, from 30 countries) also gives the event a nice international feel. We hope we managed to display a flag at the finish for every nationality that entered in advance.

Hope you make it back for the next London City Race, which takes place on Sunday 21 September 2014, back in the technical rabbit warren that is The City. It will be part of a new City Race Euro Tour series which will take place in autumn next year in London, Edinburgh, Porto and Barcelona. More details and website to follow!

Please fill out the survey that will be out in the next couple of days. Your feedback will be immensely valuable and key to how we develop the London City Race in the future.

Central Organising Team for 2013