British Airways Athletics Club: Street Suffixes Event Instructions
This is a fun competitive event that can be run or walked at
any time during the period specified.
The objective is for each participant to collect a set of street suffixes - the winners being judged on the number of
these collected and the time or distance covered.
Hint: Although this is to be done competitively some people will have natural
advantages or disadvantages due to the the streets around their starting
locations. For some this event may be a sprint, for others a marathon, and for
some it may prove impossible! Please accept your lot with a smile!
|
You need to start and finish at either an entrance to your property or
place of work OR the nearest street-sign to that entrance (but note that this
doesn't have to be one of your scoring signs). The objective is to collect as
many different suffixes as you can in the shortest time or
distance.
The suffixes are to be collected during a single exercise activity. The
duration of the activity and/or the distance covered should be recorded and
submitted with the suffixes collected. There is no limit but the shorter the
better for your result.
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 preparation time for this event
can also be used to check on Street-View where street-signs are located (but
note, as in this photo, that the street furniture may have moved or been removed since
the street-car visited!)
|
Suffixes are collected by visiting the street name signs of local streets -
the council maintained signs that identify streets, avenues, roads, paths even in some
cases roundabouts but not places (such as "Welcome to Hillingdon") nor
commercial signs, building names, school signs, church identifiers etc.. Bus
stops that are named with a particular street are also permitted signs, though
not if they are named after locations (such as "Town Hall").
Private roads may have their own name plates, not provided nor
maintained by the council. They should not be submitted for this event.
Participants should get close enough to the street-sign to be able to
take a photograph of it without the benefit of zoom. I'm not encouraging
zigzagging across busy streets so photographs can be taken from
the opposite side of the street. Photographs do not have to be submitted. If you
are not taking photographs then you should tap each sign instead. A GPS trail should be
submitted with your entry or a list of the streets in the order they were visited plus
confirmation of when you got back to your starting position and the distance
covered.
No
substitutions are permitted.
What counts as a "suffix"?
Thoroughfares are named with the following syntax:
{prefix} thoroughfare-name {suffix}
{direction}
- {prefix}: (optional) where present will usually only be the word
"The" and usually will be for thoroughfares that don't have suffixes.
Another possible prefix is "New".
- Thoroughfare-name: (mandated) One or more words that identify the
thoroughfare. This is the only mandated bit of the full thoroughfare
name. The road named "The Avenue" is a thoroughfare with a prefix of
"The" and a name of "Avenue". It does not have a suffix. Similarly
examples like "Broadway" or "The Broadway" have a thoroughfare name of
"Broadway" and no suffix - they are not "Broad" with a suffix of "Way".
- {suffix}: (optional) A loose description for the type of thoroughfare
such as "Street" and "Walk". These may be abbreviated on signs "Road"
and "Rd" or spelled differently "Way" and "Waye" but these do not make
them different suffixes.
- {direction}: (optional, before or after other elements)
This defines different sections of the same (long) thoroughfare. e.g.
"Harrow Road North" has a "direction" of "North". It's suffix is "Road".
Sometimes the direction may be provided as a prefix - e.g. "Upper Sutton
Lane" with direction "Upper", name "Sutton" and suffix "Lane".
The following list are common thoroughfare suffixes which will
probably be allowed in most cases. Others may also be permitted but you
are recommended to contact the event judge in advance to confirm that a
different suffix will be permitted. You may be asked to provide evidence
of the use of that suffix on other thoroughfares.
- Approach
- Arcade
- Avenue or Ave (one of)
- Boulevard
- Bypass
Suffix Trivia:
20% of roads in the UK have a suffix of Road but there is only one
such Road in the City of London! Milton Keynes has the next fewest road
suffixes with only 4%.
After "Roads" 15% of UK suffixes are "Close", 10% "Street", 8% "Lane"
and 6% "Avenue".
The place to be is Scotland with many towns having greater than 10%
"Places".
There is only one "Street" in Bournemouth.
Gateshead is 18% "Gardens".
In the UK there are 595 roads called "The Street" and 578 called "The
Avenue" but none called "The Road".
{source: Internet - Ed Jefferson}
|
- Causeway
- Circus
- Close
- Court
- Crescent
- Dene
- Drive
- Gardens
- Gate
- Green
- Grove
- Highway
- Hill
- Lane
- Mead or Meadow (but not both)
- Mews
- Park
- Place
- Rise
- Road or Rd (one of)
- Roundabout
- Row
- Square
- Street or St (one of)
- Terrace
- Vale
- View
- Walk
- Way or Waye (but not both)
- Wynd
- Yard
- No suffix (often with the name prefixed with "The") ONE only
permitted
The
list above is not complete - for instance I immediately came up with an
allowable addition close to where I live.
You can collect the suffixes in any order. An example of a collection of length
six could be:
-
Blackberry Way,
- Rossmore Road,
- Warwick Avenue,
- Baker Street,
- Sunset Boulevard,
- Mainstreet (no suffix).
But a street with no name in Uxbridge (U2) would not count.
Hint: Do some research before your start time and plan your route. Study the AtoZ or an online
map and consider where your nearest street suffixes are. And go for a walk and
understand where the street-signs are and whether any paths or short roads have
interesting names on signs that weren't to be found on the maps. You could even
prepare a physical map to take with you on the run. But please do not do a practice
run, that would give you an unfair advantage.
|
Having done the run you should then submit to the organiser the street names and your time and
distance taken to complete the event (i.e. get back to your start). The winner of the event will be determined by the organiser taking into account the number of
different valid suffixes collected and the time / distance covered. This
will take into account both the number and distance/time with a bias towards
greater counts. The judge's decision may be hotly contested.
Examples of street name signs are shown in the image below, although this
image is for initial letters they do show five permitted suffixes - "Road",
"Avenue", "Lane", "Way" and a "No suffix" example:
|
So, just to confirm, you have until the closing date to do your activity and
accumulate a set of suffixes. Email your
entry to the organiser including your activity type (run or walk), the distance
covered, the time
taken, the GPS map and the list of streets claimed. Towards the end of the period participants are encouraged to post
photographs, GPS trace of their route and comments on the letters collected on Facebook. But it is
considered unsporting to post a good result early in the event period.
Once all of the results have been verified winners can be announced.
Any questions? Contact the organiser:
Roderick
Hoffman
|