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As we emerge from our darkened caves, still sporting the same chocolate-encrusted jogging bottoms we’ve been wearing for months, we blink into the bright sunshine and flick our unkempt hair away from our eyes. We begin to see other vaguely familiar shapes. Is that… other humans? Are they heading to the pub as well? Will we remember how to socialise? Has everyone finally used up their lockdown hoarded bog roll?
It’s fantastic to be returning to some kind of normality and it looks like it’s been a busy couple of weeks for the club. Here’s what’s been going on:
Club Champs
Glossop 5: The results of the first Champs race are in! And what a fantastic turn-out with around 70 Harriers taking part. You can download the results from the champs page HERE. There are so many categories I’ll leave that to the number-crunchers but here are the top overall results.
| Men | |
| Southall J | 0:28:46 |
| Cook L | 0:28:59 |
| Bridges M | 0:29:24 |
| Knowles S | 0:30:13 |
| Phillips S | 0:30:22 |
| Women | |
| Trinder I | 0:34:20 |
| Bliss C | 0:37:55 |
| Rettig E | 0:37:58 |
| Bowden K | 0:38:30 |
| Swan E | 0:39:28 |
| Juniors | |
| Swan J | 0:37:39 |
| Swan C | 0:38:04 |
| Barlow W | 0:54:34 |
Three Trigs: The fourth of the big UK rounds, the Glossopdale Three Trigs takes in Cock Hill, Higher Shelf Stones and Harry Hut. All trig points seem to have been magically painted in a glorious bright white in preparation for the swarms of Harriers due to visit them throughout April. The big decision seems to be which way to go round: the easy way or the proper way…
Whilst scrolling through Strava, the distinctive 20km-ish loop is becoming a familiar sight. Paul Skuse seems to be shepherding numerous Harriers around with endless recces. Ian Crutchley has analysed every possible route choice to come up with those magical lines. Chris Jackson wants to do it but is too fearful of the flags. You were literally tripping over Harriers last weekend up there in the snow, and a mere week later the sun is beating down upon us all.
Here’s a few pics from the GDH Facebook Page. Don’t forget to submit your results via the form on the champs page HERE
Monthly Mash-Up
The newly appointed Captains (Ian Crutchley and Immy Trinder) have hit the ground running with the all-new monthly mash-up series. Rumour has it that this is just an excuse to go to the pub now and again, but it also looks like there’s some running you have to do first. Here’s the report from today’s navigation challenge from Captain Trinder:
Today was the start of the Monthly Mashup series! 15 teams of 2 hit the fells for 3 hours of navigation. John Stephenson set a fantastic course with controls varying from 20-pointers on Cock Hill to 70-pointers out in the featureless bog beyond Snake Summit! First out this morning were Guy Riddell and Bartek Verde at 7am, who set the bar high with 300 points! The biggest haul came from Mark Harrison and Matthew Bridges, who collected a staggering 410 points, but unfortunately came in 10 minutes late leaving them with 210. It was a close race between Mark Davenport & Rachel Walton, and Lance Hamilton-Griffiths & Rick Steckles – with both teams scoring 310 points, it came down to time, making Mark and Rachel the overall winners!
Here’s the full scoreboard:
| Position | Team member 1 | Team member 2 | Time | Points | Penalties | Total | |
| 1 | Rachel Walton | Mark Davenport | 02:52 | 310 | 0 | 310 | Overall winners and first mixed team |
| 2 | Rick Steckles | Lance H-G | 02:57 | 310 | 0 | 310 | First male team |
| 3 | Bartek Verde | Guy Riddell | 02:56 | 300 | 0 | 300 | |
| 4 | Phil Swan | Caitlin Swan | 02:52 | 230 | 0 | 230 | |
| 5 | Jude Stansfield | Cathy Murray | 03:01 | 250 | 20 | 230 | First female team |
| 6 | Elanor Swan | Josie Swan | 02:47 | 220 | 0 | 220 | |
| 7 | Matthew Bridges | Mark Harrison | 03:10 | 410 | 200 | 210 | |
| 8 | Lins Palmer | Rebecca Smith | 02:36 | 200 | 0 | 200 | |
| 9 | Matt Crompton | Emily O’Leary | 02:46 | 140 | 0 | 140 | |
| 10 | Alison Holt | Rebecca Ashworth | 02:52 | 140 | 0 | 140 | |
| 11 | Rosie Greenfield | Nick Dove | 02:47 | 130 | 0 | 130 | |
| 12 | Darren Clarke | Sammy Clarke | 02:55 | 110 | 0 | 110 | |
| 13 | Wendy McMahon | Christine Peters | 02:54 | 50 | 0 | 50 | |
| 14 | Jo Brack | Charmayne Brierley | 02:57 | 50 | 0 | 50 | |
| 15 | Dave Edmunds | Joe Gavin | 03:03 | 80 | 60 | 20 |
Ian and I would like to extend a massive thanks to John for setting such an interesting and enjoyable course!
The next Monthly Mashup will be a multi-terrain relay. Teams of 3 will run one road leg, one trail leg and one fell leg. Teams will be allocated randomly from the list of entrants for an extra bit of excitement! Full details will follow later this week, so get poised to sign up!
Coastal Trail Series – Sussex
I’d hazard a guess that this is a trail race with a good proportion of coast. In Sussex. Chris Smith got in his first race of the season and stomped home in 5th place out of 101. Top running Chris.
Remember these? Races.
Longhorn Marathon
It looks like this was one of the many re-scheduled races from 2020. Kate Bowden sent in this report:
So the day finally arrived for the long-awaited Longhorn Marathon. I signed up for this for April 2020 thinking it would be a good test of what I could actually do in a marathon with the right training and mindset. I was all ready last year but then…
The Longhorn is 4 x 10k (ish) loops around Sherwood Forest, it’s trail but without the usual lumps, just a gentle undulation and some varying underfoot terrain. So a good route for a marathon PB for someone who doesn’t fancy a road marathon (felt a bit like cheating tbh)
There seems to be a fair bit of chatter amongst some club members about marathon prep, and I thought it might be helpful for me to share some of mine here. Just to say, though, I was never 100% convinced this would actually take place so I can’t say I trained as such. In the past 2 or 3 months I’ve tried to gradually increase mileage by about 5 miles a week and keep it consistant. I like to vary runs in terms of speed and terrain, so some very easy, others fast and others long and felly. I have bashed out a few long training runs just for this, but it was a chore – not helped by getting blown over and cracking a knee cap – and thanks to Sue Clapham for joining me for next one when I was still feeling quite wobbly after that. Company on long runs is such a help. It helps keep you at a chatty pace and the time passes so much easier. This winter has been extra hard because of the wind and cold. I guess I’ve had to ‘dig deep’ a few times and maybe that all helped in the end.
This week I’ve tapered. Maybe I should have started sooner. Who knows? This is what I did:
Sunday – 3 Trigs recce (Strava basically told me to lie down for a bit after that) I did struggle on this – I was tired and held up the group. It worried me so close to Marathon day. Not ideal.
Monday – rest
Tuesday – easy 3 miles
Wednesday – rest
Thursday – 3 miles marathon pace, 1 mile v easy
Friday – rest
Sat – I mile jog and natter (4 rounds of toast and scambled egg. Home made scone. Noodles. Pasta and garlic bread. Loads of water, one with electrolytes, and a few cups of redbush tea) Chilled in the garden all day
Sunday – Marathon day. I ate (forced down) a mahoosive bowl of Porridge with banana and strawberries at 6am.
The day was awesome. The sun was out, it was an actual race with real life people. It didn’t snow and the breeze was actually pleasant. I liked the 4-lap thing. It felt easier to break down into 4 rather than all the miles together somehow. I broke the rules and shot off like a bullet getting close to a 10k pb on the first lap. Lap 2 also hammered, getting a HM PB. Lap 3 was tough. I thought I was broken but had a word with myself and remembered everything I have learned from team mates, training etc, fuelled up and cracked on. I enjoyed the final lap, until Garmin told me I had got to 26.2 miles about 0.3 miles from the finish. At this point my legs went to jelly and said ‘No’. I stopped, moaned, had another word and ploughed to the finish line with the marathon PB I’d been hoping for.
Cup of tea, 99, flask of noodles, then drove home to a glass of wine at the pub. I even have sunburn. A proper good day out.
Meirionnydd Round
The what? I saw this on Strava and the first challenge seems to be working out how to say it. A bit of googling tells me “The Meirionnydd Round was devised by Yiannis Tridimas in 1993, and covers most of the significant peaks in the old county of Meirionnydd in a distance of 120km and ascent of 7000m depending on whether you take the hillwalker’s line or the fell runner’s seemingly pell-mell direct line.”
Chris Webb and Tim Budd popped out to do this over the weekend and Tim sent in this report:
Chris Webb and I attempted the Merionnydd round this weekend. Couldn’t have asked for better weather, or to be in better condition. It’s a classic Yiannis round- remote, hard under foot, difficult to recce.
We had a great run on the first 2 legs, but the pretty much untrodden nature of leg 3, relentless heather and bog took their toll on leg 3 and we called it a day in the middle. And then had to finish the leg anyway.
You can read Tim’s full report HERE
100-miler for Glossop Mountain Rescue
Talking of epic challenges, next weekend Luke Holme is popping out for a quick run. Just two-and-a-half laps around the local area. With 2 x 40-mile loop followed by a 20-mile loop this is no normal challenge. He’s gathered a merry band of followers who’ll be supporting him along with way with sandwiches and insults.
It’s all in aid of Glossop Mountain Rescue (donate HERE). We’re rooting for you Luke!
EA Club Run Virtual – Session 2 and date for final session
I found out during the session that my new claim to fame is that I narrowly missed out on beating coach Chris Hollinshead at the Stafford Half Marathon in 2016. He came 2nd and if I’d just snatched a mere 608 more places, I’d have beaten him… Anyway, it was a great session and Lucy Wasinski sent in this report:
Thanks for the support to everyone who came to the 2nd of the EA Club Run Virtual sessions on Thursday night, focussing on half and full marathon preparation and racing! Chris the coach thanked you all for coming and hopes you found it interesting!
For those that missed it the link to watch it is available here:
It will only be available until Thursday so don’t hang around if you want to watch it!
Thought it was really useful to get some advice from an EA coach that we could use, given the availability of info on the internet it can be hard to pick through all the guidance/suggestions etc and find something that works for you. One thing I realised was that we probably all race way too much 😉 is there such a thing?! Probably only if we have 1 or 2 goal races to focus on in the year, Chris recommended probably only doing about 6 races in total over the year….clearly not a slave to the mid week summer races like us!!
Anyway a few other snippets of info that he mentioned:
– Consistency is key
– Only increase weekly mileage by about 10% at a time and keep it at that level for a few weeks before upping it more
– Have goals…and dont plan too many races into your season, have a few key ones.
– Recovery weeks are essential! Poss after every 3 weeks…dropping training vol by about 25 to 30%
– Last few weeks train for the surface and environment you’ll be racing on/in
– A peak performance can only happen with a taper…won’t lose fitness a couple of weeks before a race, but could do too much and be tired for race day.
And ta da….half /full marathon PB! (*ok not guaranteed….!)
Next and FINAL session will be Thursday 20th May at 7pm, so get the date in your diary and i’ll share more details about the session, and the link to join soon!
“You were driving through Glossop and you saw what?!?!”
William Mather seems to have acquired a pair of the new Inov-8 knitted shorts complete with emergency balls. The question on everyone’s lips has to be… Does this mean Rob Sheldon will rise to the challenge and step up his shorts-game?
Website
A couple of items:
Committee Pages: Minutes are being uploaded as and when available to the committee section of the website. There’s been several meetings this year already so take a look to find out what’s going on!
Knowledge Base: Don’t forget we set up the knowledge base HERE. Thanks to all those who submitted articles, and just to note that any more are welcome to build up the information on the site. Submit to the usual email address!
FINALLY
Keep your eyes on Facebook for the coached session and instructions for joining on Tuesday (It’s yazzzzzooooos) and there will probably be a few groups out on a Thursday social from the leisure centre. Have a great week and send your escapades in to gdhweeklyreports@gmail.com