baRUNNER - a website for the British Airways Athletics Club
British Airways Athletics Club: Street ReSpelling Event Instructions
This is a competitive event, but unlike the previous event it can be run at any time during the week. Some specifics within these instructions has changed so please read carefully. The objective is for each participant to select a chase-word out of a set of 26 provided below. They then need to find the street-signs of streets that start with each of the letters of their chase-word before returning home. They can visit the streets in any order. The event can be undertaken by runners and walkers but not cyclists. There can be winners on two criteria. The first will be the individual who achieve the task in the shortest possible time. The second will be the individual who achieve the task with the shortest route. Times and distances will be adjusted due to the chase-word selected. The shortest route competition may favour walkers who can take their time to choose an optimum route. The shortest route competition is also open to those unable to leave their homes - they can undertake the event with a 30 minute home exercise and submitting their route "on paper" e.g. a list of local street names to be visited in the order that they could have been run. The event adjudicator will estimate from the list of streets what distance would have been covered. Each person has to finish at the same location that they started from. This should be either their home address or their work address, with one permitted adjustment - you may start and finish at the nearest street-sign to your front door, or your workplace's front door or gate. Thus anyone who lives at the far end of a long cul-de-sac is not disadvantaged.
Participants will need to find the street-sign of each of the streets they visit. Those with suitable phones or cameras should take a photograph of each sign as they go round. Photographs should be taken without zoom from nearby (although it is permitted to take the photograph from the far side of a busy road, but it must be at the junction). Each participant is free to choose any of the 26 words listed below. Each of the words is eight letters long and consist of eight different letters. All of the letters of the alphabet are used in the 26 words. Each letter has a value attached to it according to the rarity of the letter as a start letter in street names, see the table below. Therefore each word has a value consisting of the sum of the points of the letters used. This value will be deducted as minutes from your time, and as units of 200metres from your distance. So if it takes you 17 minutes to run a word of value 20 your result would be minus three minutes. The lowest time or distance (or greatest negative) would be the winner. The judge will allow a level of leeway when it comes to "Z" and "X". For instance a "Zebra Crossing" can be substituted for either BUT would only score one point (not the normal ten). Signposts of businesses starting with "X" or "Z" will be permitted and these would score five points. Other alternatives may be permitted - please correspond with the organiser before starting the event.
If the participant fails to get one of the letters of their word they will be given a ten minute and 2km penalty AND will not score the positive points of that letter in their word (so skipping an "X" would increase the net time by 20 minutes). By "Streets" all thoroughfares are included such as streets, roads, avenues, roundabouts, footpaths, motorways (don't!) provided they have a council maintained sign giving the thoroughfare's name. Bus Stops can also be used if they indicate they are at the specific thoroughfare. Addresses on private properties such as shops do not count (except for the "X" and "Z" case described above). Some example street-sign photographs are provided below. 
Event logistics: Each participant can study the list of words and can decide which word to run for, where to start (home, work or the nearest street-sign to either of these) and when to do their run before the end of Friday. The participant needs to run to local streets that start with each letter of their chase-word. The participant can visit the streets in any order. They need to visit and, if possible, photograph a street-sign that features the street name. Having visited the eight streets they need to return to their starting point. The participant needs to record their time and either have a GPS trace of their run or the set of photographs of the eight street signs (or be prepared to swear blind that they visited the streets in a given sequence). They should email the organiser with the time and distance run, the word selected and whether they failed to get any of the letters. Participants may be tempted to try a different word later on in the week, and may score better. It is against the spirit of this competition to submit a result from a second or subsequent attempt - but you are invited to write a "the one that got away" note, for instance on Facebook. Towards the end of the week participants are encouraged to post their photographs and a GPS trace of their route and time on Facebook. But it is considered unsporting to post a good result early in the event week. Once all of the results have been verified winners can be announced both on quickest time and shortest distance. Letter Distribution and Points
Letters marked "*" and "**" are considered rare. The following points are used for the letters in each word:
Each point earned would deduct a minute from your time and 200m from your distance.
Selected Words for week 13th July to 17th July
So, for instance, "Networks" is a word that you can run and would score you 23 points. The letter columns are provided to help you choose a good word for you to run. CreditThese words were found using https://www.morewords.com/unique-letters. Contact the organiser: Roderick Hoffman
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Hint: Roads usually have their street-sign at the two ends of the road or
where the road crosses a bigger road. It can be difficult, or impossible, to
find a street-sign for some bigger roads! 
The
chart shows the number of streets in London starting with each letter of the
alphabet. This has been estimated from the street index of a copy of the London
AtoZ.