Noel Morris, a former Spitfire pilot, was a stalwart supporter of grass roots running. The Denbigh Harriers Handicap is named in his honour.
The idea for a regular handicap originated at Chris Baldwin’s previous club, North Shields Polytechnic AC. Alan Catley, a British International marathon runner in the 1980s and university friend of Chris, invented a computer programme which shuffled start times according to most recent race results. The event had about 100 runners every month throughout the winter doing a 3.6 mile road course along the seafront at Whitley Bay, relying on the services of a grade one AAA timekeeper and volunteers to handle everybody finishing at the same time. Chris left in 1992, whilst Alan published a booklet with all the results entitled ‘NSP Handicap 1987-1997: The First Ten Years‘.
Denbigh Harriers, ably led and ‘handicapped’ by Chris, have in this spirit, been running a 5K off road summer series since 2001.
The series is run once a month from March to October on a 3 mile cross country course on public footpaths around Denbigh. Each runner is given a start time reflecting their current running form with the faster runners starting last. When the handicapping works well the runners finish the course at more or less the same time.
2023 Route
