FLRC Challenge Rules

Home | Swag | Courses | Prizes | Timing | Ultra Challenges

Register

A great deal of thought and discussion has gone into the FLRC Challenge rules, and they’re correspondingly detailed. Everyone should read the Basic Rules and Background below; then continue to the Individual Competition and Team Competition rules for the fine print on how it all works. But remember, the leaderboard keeps track of everything!

Note that, with the exception of overall completion, Most Miles, Most Stars, and the new Most Courses competition, all competitions take into account only efforts on the Classic Challenge courses.

Basic Rules and Background

  1. It’s Good to Be King: The Challenge Director makes all the rules and has the final say on any interpretations thereof.
  2. Have Fun: Every rule is designed, in the view of the Challenge Director, to make the FLRC Challenge more fun. And fair. And inclusive. But mostly fun.
  3. Change Is Inevitable: The Challenge Director reserves the right to change the rules at any time to make them conform better to Rule #2. Any rule changes will be explained on the FLRC forum.
  4. No Backfilling: Results for a course may be only submitted for efforts completed after the runner is registered for the FLRC Challenge and the course is open. In other words, past runs don’t count. That said, if you join a group run on a Challenge course and sign up for the Challenge shortly after, there’s no problem with submitting your group run time. The goal is to prevent people from submitting their fastest times from long-ago runs.
  5. Lather, Rinse, Repeat: Runners are encouraged to run each course as many times as they want throughout the year while attempting to achieve their fastest time, improve their average time, and add to their number of efforts.
  6. Any Which Way but Loose: All courses may be run in any direction, even with a different starting and ending point, as long as you cover the ground for the entire course. The results do not distinguish which direction was run. However, always run against traffic on public roads.
  7. Segments Are Fine: You may also run a course in multiple segments as part of an intentionally longer run. For instance, you could start in Cass Park, run the first half of the Lakefront Loops course, remember your split time, head over to Stewart Park for some more miles, and then come back to finish off Lakefront Loops. Four caveats: (1) it’s up to you to keep track of your times, (2) segment-based runs won’t be accepted for fastest times, (3) all segment-based runs must be completed in the same overall session, and (4) you don’t get to subtract time spent being lost—that’s on you, just like getting lost in a race.
  8. No Pausing: While it’s acceptable to remove off-course time during a longer run with multiple segments, it is not okay to stop your watch if you pause during a run, just as you don’t get to rest during a race. Otherwise, someone could complete a course in a series of timed sprints and untimed recoveries. This also applies if you’re forced, such as by your mother’s unexpected early arrival for dinner, to stop halfway through a run and finish it several hours later. You can submit the effort, but with the full elapsed time of the session from when you started until when you finished, including the time you weren’t running.
  9. New! No Course Double-Dipping: Some courses overlap, such as the East Hill Rec Way and the East Hill Dryden Rail Trail. When running a route that could nominally count for multiple courses, you must pick one, in part because it would otherwise add miles you didn’t run to the Most Miles competition. So if you run the East Hill Dryden Rail Trail course, you can’t also record two separate East Hill Rec Way efforts.
  10. New! Remote Races: To allow for Challenge participation during travel and to fit in with other race training, you can submit 1600m runs from any measured track to the Sweet 1600 course, 5K races or parkruns to the Lakefront Loops course, 10K races to the Sights of the Heights course, and half marathon races to the Freeville Fly-In course. You must also post a race report in conjunction with your time.
  11. Trust but Verify: The leaderboard automatically ignores results under 4 minutes, but there’s no way to know if a really fast time is legitimate or if the runner accidentally cut the course or entered a time incorrectly. Runners who submit course-leading times or surprisingly fast times should be prepared to corroborate their achievement with a GPS track, Strava post, personal statement from a running companion, or the like.
  12. No Hoarding: Although it’s entirely acceptable to record times for later posting if you’re just lazy, you may not hoard and later release efforts for competitive reasons. In other words, no dropping a bunch of previously recorded runs all at once to change leaderboard standings.
  13. Accommodations Allowed: The new Personal Challenge functionality allows anyone to adjust the difficulty of the Challenge to their needs. It can be used by kids under a certain age who shouldn’t run more than three or four miles, wheelchair users who complete only paved courses, or injury-prone runners who must restrict themselves to soft-trail courses.
  14. Age Grading: Age grading is a way of leveling the playing field for people of different ages and sexes. It calculates what percent any given run is of the world record for that distance for a runner of that exact age and sex. For instance, if a 47-year-old woman runs a 5K in 21:30, age grading determines that her time is 74.87% of the 5K world record for a 47-year-old woman. A 47-year-old man would have to run the 5K in 18:49 to get the same age grading, based on the 5K world record for a man of his age.

Age-grading tables include data only for standard road race distances. When possible, the FLRC Challenge leaderboard uses those numbers. For non-standard distances, the leaderboard does a linear interpolation between the age grades of the closest distances above and below the actual race distance.

Note that the age grading for trail races will seem remarkably low because the world records are set on the roads, and likely on flat courses. In other words, don’t read too much into the specific age grading numbers for trail races; what’s important is that everyone will be treated equally.

Individual Competition Rules

  1. Overall Individual Points Competition: Overall points are calculated using a point system similar to the one FLRC uses for the traditional Stonehead awards on the FLRC Trail Circuit:
    • For each course, the male and female with the fastest times will be awarded 100 points.
    • Every other person completing the course will be awarded a number of points corresponding to what percent their fastest time is the overall fastest time. For instance, if the winner of a particular course ran 43:33 for 100 points, a person who ran the course in 44:19 gets 98.27 points because 43:33 is 98.27% of 44:19.
    • To calculate an overall point score for the series, each runner’s points for each course are totaled. The maximum possible point score is 1000, if someone posts the fastest time on all ten courses.
  2. Overall Most Miles Competition: This competition is straightforward, but to preempt any questions, it is based on the total distance covered across all courses (including those not in the Classic Challenge), not the number of efforts.
  3. Overall Age Grade Competition: This competition is designed to level the playing field across the entire series. It is based on the highest age grades for those who complete all ten courses and has two components:
    • For each course, each runner’s fastest time is given an age grade.
    • For the entire series, each runner’s age grades for all courses completed are averaged.
  4. Overall Community Stars Competition: This competition is designed to encourage and reward social behavior. For each run (including those on courses outside the Classic Challenge, you can earn up to two community stars for running with at least one other person or posting a story or photo from the run.
    • For a group run, you’ll get a star if at least one person starts their run on the same course within 5 minutes. If you’re planning to record your run manually after running, you and your friend must both do so within the same 5-minute window. We’ll watch this and can tweak the window if necessary.
    • For either story/photo stars, you’ll need to post in the associated course’s topic in the FLRC Challenge category on the FLRC forum. There is a Post Using This Template button in the first message that you can click to create a reply with the proper formatting for the leaderboard code to recognize your post. You must post your report in the proper topic and on the same calendar day as the run to get credit.
  5. Overall Most Courses Competition: This competition is also straightforward and designed to encourage people to run in many more places during the year. There are 45 courses in the overall FLRC Challenge—how many can you complete during the year?
  6. Per-Course Age Group Competition: For the most part, this competition works exactly as in any typical race—the male and female with the fastest times for each course win. However, there are two notes:
    • The runners winning the prizes for the fastest overall times on each course are not also eligible for their age-group prizes. The age-group prizes will go to the people who place second in the age groups of the winners.
    • Runners who age up to a new age group during the year, such as from 39 to 40, may compete in both groups for age-group awards. For instance, if 39-year-old Galen Rupp participates in the FLRC Challenge, his runs on a particular course through his birthday on May 8th would be counted for the 30-39 age group, and his runs after May 8th would be counted for the 40-49 age group. Given that he’s Galen Rupp, it’s likely he’d win both age groups. Those of you whose age ends with a 9, think of this as one of the few rewards of getting older.
  7. Per-Course Best Average Time Competition: This competition has two caveats:
    • To compete at all, runners must complete at least the average number of efforts that someone has completed the course. Otherwise, the fastest runner could run the course only once and have the fastest time as the best average time, which isn’t fair. For instance, imagine a course where 4 people have run three times, 5 people have run twice, and 6 people have run once. That’s 28 total runs divided by 15 runners, making the average number of runs 1.9. Thus, only people who have completed at least 2 efforts can compete.
    • A runner’s “best average time” is calculated using the course-run-average number of their top efforts. In the example above, since the average number of efforts for the course is 1.9, only the top 2 efforts for each runner will be used to calculate the best average time. This rule ensures that there’s no penalty for running slowly on a course—a slow effort beyond the average number of efforts will not bring down a runner’s average time.
  8. Per-Course Most Runs Competition: Note that men and women compete equally for this prize—there’s no reason to separate it by sex because a woman could win it just as easily as a man.

Team Competition Rules

  1. Team Composition: There are five age group teams: 1-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and 60+. Runners are assigned to the appropriate 10-year age-group team based on their age as of April 18, 2026. Team assignments do not change if a runner ages up, such as from 39 to 40.
  2. Overall Team Competition: The team competition has two metrics, each of which earns points that are combined for a final point score. We use cross-country scoring, where the lowest score wins. Here’s how it works:
    • For each course, the age grades of the best efforts for each of the top ten runners (sorted by age grade, not time) on the team are averaged to provide an average age grade for the team. The teams are ranked by average age grading and receive the number of points associated with the ranking. So, if the 40-49 team has the highest age grading for a particular course, it gets 1 point. The second-place team gets 2 points, and so on. Assume the 30-39 team places third, and thus gets 3 points.
    • For each course, the number of efforts by members of the team is totaled. Again, the teams are ranked and awarded points based on their ranking. For example, the 30-39 team might have 250 efforts on the course for first place, where the 40-49 team has only 239 for second. The 30-39 team would get 1 point and the 40-49 team would get 2 points.
    • Next, the age-grading points and the most-efforts points are totaled for a combined score. In our example, the 40-49 team would have 3 points and the 30-39 team would have 4 points, putting the 40-49 team in the lead for that course.
    • For the overall series team standings, these points are totaled across all ten courses. As noted above, the lowest overall score wins.

Any questions? Ask Challenge Director Adam Engst.