You should by now have seen the posting on the NIOA website announcing the start of the 2025 Colour Series with the event at Learmount Forest, hosted by NWOC (with entries closing at 21:30 next Sunday). That signals the start of a number of year-long league series. The NISeries runs over 7 events, with your best 4 to count, so it’s time to decide your target colour for the year.
The other series is hCOW, specifically for LVO members, and runs over 8 events (the club’s Autumn Trophy is the extra one). It deals only with the TD5 courses (Brown to Short Green) and, unlike the NISeries, which is based on time, it uses speed (adjusted for differing terrain) as the measure of performance. In the hCOW series running near to your expected speed (your handicap) puts you top of the heap – the farther away (+ or -) the worse your score. In the Regatta series the best scores are for the greatest improvement on handicap. Thus hCOW rewards consistency, Regatta rewards improvement.
Anyone who recorded a handicap in last year’s hCOW series will have it carried forward as their starting position; everyone else will have to return a result to get a handicap before they can score points. The initial handicaps are available on the website; go to “STANDINGS>hCOW>hCOW2025>Initial Handicaps.pdf”. Note that in the list there are a number of “pinkies” who have not yet rejoined for this year. In both hCOW and NISeries their performance will not be included in the league calculations until they (hopefully) remember to renew.
The full list of “pinkies” can be found in the colour standards table at “STANDINGS>Colour Standards>Colour Standards.pdf”.