The Lockdown 2.0 (Bi-)Weekly Report!

With Lockdown 2.0 upon us, the nights drawing in and the temperature dropping, it’s an easy time to lose motivation, curl up on the sofa with your cats, and watch period dramas on Netflix while it blows a veritable hooley outside. Naming no names of course. However, despite the absence of races, or even the ability to run in more than pairs, it seems that GDH are not short of creativity when it comes to devising their own challenges!

Foodraiser
Guy Riddell reports on the first known completion of the Manor Park 50, all in aid of Glossop Food Bank:

Last Friday night (6^th November) I ran 50 loops of Manor Park, asking people to sponsor me by way of donations to give to Glossop Food Bank. I had initially hoped to be able to call on the GDH insomniacs to join me for a loop or three, just to break the monotony a little. Unfortunately, Boris had other ideas, so I set off with just Pete Wallroth for company at 7pm, and round and round we went.

A few Harriers popped up at different points to give socially distanced encouragement: Darren & Rebecca Ashworth, Pete Nicholson and Darren Clarke in a comedy double act with Monty the dog – I particularly liked the bit when Monty dragged Darren with such force he ended up in a flower bed. It was cold, it was dark, and the Parkrun route isn’t very easy in such conditions. As usual, there were a few randoms lurking in the shadows smoking questionable substances, skaters skating at the skate park, and geese & ducks squabbling on the pond. Otherwise it was a fairly nondescript affair going round and round getting tired and sleepy.

Pete started to feel a niggle around 12 laps in, and did great to complete 30 laps before sensibly heading home to a warm bed at about 2am. Another 20 laps on my own suddenly felt quite daunting, and it was getting ever colder. Still, I managed to press on and completed the distance at about 6:20am.

The Norris McWhirter of GDH (Dan Stinton) has confirmed that this is the first time anyone has completed 50 laps of Manor Park, so I shall contact Guinness shortly for ratification. Next time 60 laps maybe. Maybe.

My lounge is full of bags of food for the Food Bank, so totally worth the effort – just got to get it all to the Food Bank now.  Thanks to all who supported me by dropping off stuff, it’s really been an amazing response!

Brilliant effort, Guy! If anyone would still like to donate to Glossop Food Bank, several convenient drop-off locations listed on their website, along with a list of the items they would appreciate – https://glossopdalefoodbank.org.uk/donate-food.

14-year-old Record Broken!
Report courtesy of official timekeeper, Jeroen Peters.

Last week, early on Saturday morning 7/11, Paul Peters and David Christie-lowe turned up at the Leisure Centre for a go at the GH Handicap 10k. Due to Corona, the format was slightly different to ensure safe distancing so David set off only 1 minute before Paul on this dry and sunny but cold morning. As David said afterwards: “At least I was winning for 1km or so”. That was near Glossop Fire station when Paul overtook him, making the “race” more of a time trial than a proper handicap race.

Paul pushed on and up the long drag from Hadfield to the top of North Road when he crossed the 8km mark in 29 minutes. He realised that he only had about 6 minutes left to get back to the LC if he wanted to get under his target time of 35 minutes. And indeed, he did as I he stopped the clock on 34:52, breaking the course record by just over 2 minutes. A record that was set by Matt Kierras in 2006 and was matched by Mark Ollerenshaw a year later. These two held the record of 36:56 jointly. No more……

David came in a few minutes later in 46:41. A pretty good time but as this was not a PB, he was not entirely satisfied with his own performance. I’d say, it was a pretty good one!

Old Glossop Fell Race
The Old Glossop Fell Race seems to be the latest fashion, with Daniel Stinton, Joshua Southall, Sarah Andrew and Robin Hoffman all completing the route in the last two weeks. Some top efforts on a tough route! Dan reports on his:

I’d booked a few days off work around my birthday so decided to use the time wisely and go for a long run in the hills! With the race calendar pretty barren, the flavour of the… er… year appears to be hunting out challenges. I’d run the “New Old Glossop Fell Race” route a couple of weeks ago so decided to have a go at the “Old Glossop Fell Race” to see how they compared. To try to add some additional excitement, I embraced technology and used the pace setting on my watch and arbitrarily set it at 4:40 knowing I’d get updates as to how I was doing against this pace. I was feeling quite chuffed being 6 or so minutes “up” already along Doctors Gate but I soon ate into that on the tough climb up Ashton Clough!

It was pretty good going after that until I arrived at Lawrence Edge. I’d only ever been up this once so had no idea on the best way down, but it seemed that I chose the worst – ridiculously steep, deep heather covering large boulders so I kind of hung on and gradually slid down praying for any sight of a path ahead. Finally over the other side of the resers I got a reminder how great the views are from there!

As I headed back towards Torside, I had to sneakily climb into the construction site to get over the dam. After 16-17 miles of tough running, no way was I going to take a long detour! I was flagging on the climb up Torside but I knew once I got to the cabin it was all downhill finally! I made it to turning circle in 4:17 so was pretty pleased with the time and stood happily in the brook for a while cooling the feet! Great day off work!

Daniel Stinton – 4:17 
Sarah Andrew and Robin Hoffman – 5:29 
Joshua Southall – 5:32

The Bleakest Trigs
In the meantime, Pete Wallroth and Luke Holme have been out exploring, and landing themselves in all kinds of mischief…

So Luke and I headed over to Dunford Bridge on Saturday to explore some newish terrain, specifically aiming for Snailsden and Dead End Edge trig points. From any parking spot around Winscar Reservoir, Snailsden trig is easy to get to, albeit sits slightly off the track that leads you over the moor. From there we dropped and the rose along Ruddle and Ramsden Clough. Paths disappear at this point and in the fog we had, it was follow your nose time. Fortunately 2 miles of following a fenceline leads you directly to what has to be one of the most sorry for itself trigs we’ve seen to date: Dead End Edge. Shame really given it sits right on the Derbyshire/Yorkshire boundary.

Anyway, we dropped from there to the air shafts above the old Woodhead tunnels and planned a grough kick back to Winscar. 

“Stop, I’m Caught In A Trap!”

Sorry, what?!

Expecting “I can’t get out, because I love you too much baaabaaayyy” to follow, I turned around disappointingly only to see Luke with one foot in a bog and the other snagged in a snare! Only he could manage both at the same time. On a serious note, this could have been worse, especially if it had happened to someone on their own. Thankfully we were on slow ground, and it wasn’t barbed so slipped off easily enough around his delicate little legs. But a warning to others: when running in the groughs, take caution.

That was it by way of excitement. We made our way back around to Winscar and all in all, it was a good 11 mile loop. 

Lessons to the wider club: Keep an eye on snares and don’t waste time going to find Dead End Edge trig. It’s rubbish! 🤪

The NOT Coached Session
Following the request of one loyal NOT Coached Session runner, this week a slightly less complicated set so you do not have to test your mental maths abilities (Joe, are you paying attention? 🤭). Also, you can do this set anywhere as it is time/effort based, rather than distance. Does this also mean it is less testing? Well, I guess that depends on the effort you are prepared to put into it. However, please do not push yourself so hard as to do yourself an injury. If you have not done much speed work, which this week unashamedly is, take down the speed somewhat or reduce the number of intervals!!

This set is called “100s” and involves running hard for 100 seconds or 1min 40 sec, followed by a 3-minute jog. And a jog means that there is no walking (!) in this set. In other words:

• 100 seconds (1:40) @ 1-mile pace
• 3-minute jog (not walk)
• Repeat up to (!) 10 x

Because of the high intensity of this set from the start, you must prepare well by completing a rigorous warmup. Try some or all of the following:

• 10-minute easy run
• 3×30 second jogging on the spot, increasing cadence every 10 seconds. 30 seconds rest
• 3x 30 seconds high-skips with arm swing. Focus on relaxed shoulders. Walk back
• 3×30 seconds butt kicks. Walk back
• 2x 30 seconds Grapevine or Carioca (1 left and 1 right) with step-over. Stand hip in running direction. Cross hind leg past your standing leg and then move other leg forward. Next, cross hind leg in front of standing leg and lift high, with your knee close to your chest. Move other leg forward. 
• 4 or 5 strides. A stride is where you start gently, pick up the pace gradually until you hit ~ 7-8/10 RPE. Maintain for about 10 meters before easing off, back to jog. Jog about the same distance as your stride before the next one. A stride is never longer than 100m.

You should be breathing deeply now, so take a little break to get your breath back before the start of the main set. While you are doing this, you can do some leg swings, back/forth and side to side.

Coach J

A note from the committee
At the end of the month, Yahoo is closing down its group email service. There are still quite a few members who receive their club news through this Yahoo list who are not on Facebook. The committee will have to look at this but in the interim, I will create an email list so you can continue to receive emails with the training sets. It will also enable me to keep you informed of important club news until a new system for communication is in place.

If you are interested in receiving emails with training sets and other club/committee news, just send an email to jeroenajpeters@hotmail.com with “GH email list” in the subject line from your email account that you want to be added to the list. This list is only an interim solution and will be deleted as soon as the club has adopted a new way of communication, other than Facebook.

This Week’s Big Miles…

…and Big Climbs!

So, that’s a wrap! Thanks everyone for your contributions. Reports are currently on a bi-weekly basis, but please keep sending in the stories of your misdemeanours!