Ice, mud and running round parks. The weekend report.

The New Year has begun, new resolutions have been made, miles have been started and everyone is thoroughly positive about how things are looking for the next 12 months. Let’s see how everyone feels in about 3 weeks…

It is great to see a load of people out on the club runs, I reckon we must have had 24 out in various guises on Thursday. Don’t be shy. There were 4 groups doing different things on that night. Get on the doodle poll, sign up to lead an evening run, or just turn up and do something.

The AGM is rapidly approaching – it will be at the Oakwood on Wed 17th Jan. We’ll try and make it as speedy and as painfree as possible. If it comes to it, there is anaesthetic in liquid form on sale from the bar.

so what went on this week?

Hit the Trail

It seems that there is a growing propensity to run around parks in the Manchester area. This week was no different with a glut of Harriers heading to Reddish Vale (insert your

joke about being approximately red….) for the Hit the Trail 5 miler. It was a Club Champs last year, so I wonder if a few people were out to see if they could improve on their time… maybe it is a bit of a test to see just how much fitness has been lost during the festive period.

As for results, I haven’t seen them, though I have a little bit of insight from the facebook page, though they are by no means complete. Crossman, as ever went along to pick up the fastest “oldie” award, grabbing the race by the neck and giving it a good shake, Tony Hillier was there to pick up the “fastest even oldier oldie” award, and made light work of his rivals. Emma Rettig was putting her XC training to extremely good use, also winning a category prize, but I shall not embarrass myself by attempting to guess exactly what that category was, apart from Female. Amongst the other runners battling it out through the mud and gravel were Chris “the bearded” Jackson, Paul “I only do short races now” Skuse, the 2 of which I would imagine had a pretty heated battle. Matt Crompton, smarting from his recent defeat at the hands of Rich Martin was out getting in the hard and fast miles. Will Mather and Nick Ham were also spotted wearing the Blue and Orange, one going past with a slight bit more blur than the other, and there was a surprise attendance from newby Mark Milns, who I have not met yet, and subsequently have nothing rude or disparaging to say about him whatsoever. Welcome! Power couple Guy and Mel Riddell were out, battling against the rest of the world, with Mel showing everyone just how to race with *style*. Guy…. well, not so much. John Stephenson was taking time out from some serious grough bashing to enjoy getting lost in a park – prior to even starting the race…., and Charmayne was hitting the race hard, like a true dyed in

the wool cross-country-phile. It was a delight to see Jo Brack chasing after Nick Ham – and nearly catching him at the end, and it was equally wonderful to see Rachel Higginbottom out on the racing circuit again. Last time we met it was on a hill with rather too much alcohol being involved on a Summer Solstice… I hope that didn’t put her off running for an entire half year.

And that’s all the people I saw/could recognise from the photos. Sorry if I missed you. Let me know and I’ll try and make something up…

Oh – Ive just seen from Strava that Malc “no-one keeps me down” Brown, Dan “the Don” Ellingworth and Simon “Damn Crossman for getting me into this” Toole were also hammering around the Vale on Sunday morning. Good effort to you all. I’ll post a link to the results when a)it gets published and b) I can find it.

Central Lancashire Half marathon

So, from the depths of Strava comes another gem – the Central Lancs half. Which one presumes is a half marathon, based somewhere in Lancashire… a quick look at the strava map tells me that, yes, it is indeed somewhere near Preston, which is vaguely up that way-ish. Paul Drury was out and about in those environs and got a chip time of 2:08:40. Which is pretty decent when you consider how hard it is to run and eat at the same time. Especially when they’re coated with salt and vinegar. Eugh.

Crosscountry

Kirsty Sharp was off in Heaton Park this weekend on the XC county trials. She doesn’t know how she did, but needless to say, she ran her socks off. I look forward to hearing the results. As does she.

Parkrun

This week Glossop parkrun was cancelled due to a fallen tree and not enough people with chainsaws. However, there were a fair few people out and about tourism-ing, and here is the consolidated report.

Other news

In other news, a load of people have been getting out for the 1 mile challenge – the january part of the club champs. If you don’t know where it is, find out and go run it. Let me know what your time was. If I can corroborate it, you’ll get it on the spreadsheet, and into the champs.

Good to have people out doing the navigation challenge over Christmas, shame about the snow. I’m putting out another (shorter, but a little trickier) challenge in the next couple of days. Details to follow.

Also, if you have nothing better to do on the weekend of the 14/15 April, I’m setting out a Mountain Marathon course (well, 3 of them) to go between Glossop and a campsite near Hope. You can run it with all your clobber, or with nowt but day kit and have your stuff taken to the campsite… the site has showers, toilets and, most importantly, a pub, so if you just want a social evening, you can literally just drive there, pub and camp it, and come home. Hopefully there might be some uptake on the MM courses as well. Let me know if you’re interested.

That’s it for now – or at least until some wise-cracker tells me I haven’t been psychic enough to know they were doing something that isn’t recorded anywhere, so hopefully see you out on Thursday when you all magically appear for a social run,

 

 

ah Bollocks. Matt Crompton has just found the hit the trail results. Here is the link. From looking at them, it seems like the only 2 people I’ve missed mentioning are wunderkind Ezme Brack, who seems to be getting to the point where she will be giving everyone a run for their money, and Jayne Moreton… who I should have *known* would be racing…. that being said, Skusey isn’t on the list as a Glossopdale Harrier… hmmm. (though crikey – good going on a top 10 place!)

Oh yes, and it was wildly fantastic being out on the moors today. Sorry you all had to run around a park.

 

And good luck to you lot running the Trigger next week. The weather looks… um, lovely?