“As if there wouldn’t be a weekly report” weekly report

What a week!  When Boris Johnson starts following you on Strava you know it’s time to change your privacy settings!

As you would imagine, this is not going to be your standard weekly report.  I checked the GDH inbox (washed hands first of course) and there was a single lonely race submission from Greg Wasinski reporting on a race a few weeks back.  Remember a few weeks back?  When there were races, loo roll and you didn’t have to awkwardly swerve the general public by a minimum of 2m?  Delivery drivers are now experts at “knock door run” and the only pasta you can get is the rude shaped stuff from Ann Summers (so I heard!) .  Life has certainly taken an unusual twist.

We all know how great it is to live so close to the hills and whilst it’s no doubt helping us all feel much better being able to get out and run, it’s worth having a read of the Glossop Mountain Rescue Team advice on their pinned post on the GMRT Facebook page.

We’ll get to the race report shortly, but I’ve had a browse of the usual social media channels to see how the harriers have been filling their time.  This report might seem a bit random and I’m sure to have missed many things – if so add it to the comments!

Pictures of the Week

I thought rock was dead, but picture of the week has to go to Swan Jovi who are keeping the 80’s rock look alive.  I do wonder if they’ve made Phil keep his hoodie on backwards?

Pauls Skuse posted some art/drawings lessons earlier in the week and clearly Steve Crossman (aged 53 and a half) was paying attention and posted these carefully crafted masterpieces….

Before we get to more GDH shenanigans, here’s Greg Wasinski‘s report.  Be aware though, if you want to try and pronounce Greg’s Welsh running club then the mandatory distance to stay away from people increases to over 3m….

Ras yr Aran 2020

So I decided to do this because it was organised by my Welsh club, Meirionnydd and this year was going to be my year of Welsh fell races. So much for that…

As it turns out though, it was also the first counter for the British Fell Champs so the great and the good were down to turn up (a starting line up of nearly 500). Even if I’d been training well it would have been like me turning up on a F1 starting grid in a Nissan Micra. With various ailments it was actually a bit closer to Robin Reliant…

Ras yr Aran basically goes from a village at one end of Bala lake straight up the Aran mount, and then back down. So about 17km with 1000m of ascent. The day turned out grey and drizzly, which meant that the ground went from wet and boggy grass through to wet and slippy jagged rock, with a couple of short sections needing some clambering up. Did I say boggy? And slippy? Needless to say, after running up and seeing the runner in front of me disappear up to their thigh in a bog and smugly thinking “Glad I avoided that”, I managed to find it on the way back down. As well as another one that hadn’t noticed on way up 😡 Other than that, I ran up, ran down (and it is a great second half of what could be done really fun and quick descending), and fell in a couple of bogs. There probably isn’t too much more to say about the actual race. That obviously doesn’t do it justice but as it was the furthest I had run in over 3 months there wasn’t much energy to think about tactics or anyone else running it! Definitely worth a look for anyone planning races for next year while in lockdown, with a really nice relaxed atmosphere, and sponsored by the farm on whose land it is run, who also do a great lamb burger for afterwards 🙂 And a coaster memento to add to the collection 👍

Loads of Other stuff

Sikobe, Luke Holme and Antony Walker have been posting various pics on FB to see if you can guess where they are.  Trigs, tussocks and rocks all look the same don’t they?  Not to the hill geeks of course! See how many you can spot!

Triggety Trig!

There’s been all sorts of quizzes, including a charity one from Ben Robertson which, to be honest, I looked at and didn’t even know what I was meant to be guessing, but it twigged eventually!

Ian Oates bought some new argyle socks, impressively in GDH colours.

Tim Budd has shown us on Instagram the best dance moves to try in a disco in Bulgaria (with what looks like a traditional Bulgarian haircut).  There’s another benefit though, it also helps strengthen our bodies – we all know strength training is something we should be doing anyway so if you don’t already, now is the ideal time to start.  Take a look at the Global Therapies videos!

There have been Zoom quizzes, meditation training, virtual booze-ups, and the Covid Arms has been established by landlord Dan Ellingworth.

A word of warning on video-callls though folks.  I watched a video on Tuesday (you know, Tuesday that feels like 3 months ago) of a team meeting in America where one of the participants took their laptop, mid-meeting, into the toilet.  Down went the trousers, pants round ankles, as the other participants in the meeting tried their best to not look horrified.   The woman in question suddenly realised and batted her laptop away, but the damage was done and it went viral.  The take home message being – DON’T FORGET YOU’RE ON VIDEO!

A personal one here, and whilst I don’t think he’s paid his subs so isn’t an official member of GDH, Jacob Stinton, has been proudly running around in his first ever pair of running shoes! He has a good pace already so we’re looking forward to junior parkrun!

If it’s not on Strava….

Whilst I’m sure the two-run-a-dayers have been keeping a low profile, here’s the weekly Strava club stats….

Women: Wendy Trelease has recorded the most distance this week with 79km, with Jessica Camp (65km) and Lucy Wasinski (62km) not far behind.  Tracey Robinson topped the elevation chart with 2,085m

Men: Riccardo G has ground out 126km during the week with Paul Peters (91km) and Guy Riddell (87.9km) next on the leaderboard.  As if 126km wasn’t enough Riccardo also did 3,665m elevation.  We’re probably going to find out this was all in his garden or up and down the stairs or something!

What’s Next?

Any races coming up? I’m sure it’s at the forefront of your minds so Manor Park Marathon has NOT been cancelled.  Mainly becuase it hadn’t been organised in the first place, but I’ll mention it now considering it might be the next “race” of the season.  Saturday 29^th August (bank holiday weekend), get it in your calendars!

It’s obviously a difficult time, but I’m not going to dwell on that here.  It’s been fantastic to see the Harriers coming up with creative ideas to keep us all entertained and this last week is a reminder of all the great things happening in the club and what great support is out there!

The new sign-off seems to be “Stay Safe”….. so stay safe everyone, and if anyone needs anything then I’m sure the GDH collective will be more than happy to help any way they can!

Please send anything you want in to gdhweeklyreports@gmail.com !!!