It’s Spring! (til it snows again)

Jeez. I know there were some weekends where I didn’t write much because all the races were cancelled, but crikey, do you all have to do quite so much?! A veritable smorgasboard of bits and stuff and races and suchlike this week. I’ve tried to keep it as short and intelligible as possible, but really, I have no idea what I’ve just written.

MDOC

On Saturday morning (post parkrun, of course) MDOC were on hand to put out a couple of nav courses in and around Manor Park. There was a pretty decent uptake, and a few of our number decided to get their nav-practice on. (which is always good… the more you practice, the better you get). It has to be said that the key to the challenge was realising that there were maps and checkpoints on both sides of the paper… something that was discovered by honorary GDH member Rob Taylor on the train home, having run half the course…. There was a bit of a battle royale on the long course between speedster Emma Peters and sneaky local knowledge expert Lynne Taylor.  John Stephenson was on hand to provide a chasing time, but got a bit sidetracked by navving to Coop, which was a little further than the outer edges of the map. Emma proved to be a little longer in the legs and had the speed to catch up on Lynne, despite a couple of minor nav errors, while John was mainly trying to tire himself out before the race on Sunday – y’know, just to give the young’uns a chance. The results looked a little like this….

2nd Emma – 41:51
5th Lynne – 43:37
6th John S 46:11

On a separate course, Caitlin Swan was showing off her map skillz and local knowledge, bashing around the course in 20:23, coming in a tremendous 4th. Nicely run (and navved) everyone.

Ice skaters fun run 5k

Down on the Isle of Wight Claire Campbell was taking part in the 4th of 6 5kk races. From the title I can only assume that it is put on by some of the lot in Ryde Arena, the local ice skating venue. (I’ve been waiting for a ski jump for years, but they never got around to building it…) Claire mooched around the course in some super time which no-one appears to have noted on their facebook page that I could find, more important for this series was the positions (and, for some reason that escapes me, points… so there we go –  4th and 1st FV40 and 10 points!

Liverpool 10 miler

4 inns

65k of amusement over hills, bog and road and footpath and other stuff and 3 teams with various variations of GDH members. I have more stories than I care to mention, but will just give you a taster from the other teams:

Ian Crutchley says…  The aptly named Bubble & Squeak team, consisting of Luke Holme and Ian Crutchley of GDH, plus a couple of friends of friends hit the hills at 07.10. Following Daves immediate recurring hip problem, the team was reduced to walking which did nothing to reduce the difficulty. It just meant more time on our feet. We finished in 14.40. Despite the leisurely time, we had a great laugh, and will be back here next year.
Back next year? Their stupidity will for suffering knows no bounds.

I got this off Mark Harrison of the team with Paul Skuse, Sikobe Litaba and Sue Clapham… Actually, let me paraphrase: Day went well except for a minor nav mishap on Tooleyshaw moss, managed to drop a gopro on Bleaklow and had to run back for it, miraculously finding it, and only losing about 25 mins in the process, pace started to slow from Snake-ish and the wheels basically came off on Kinder. Which is never good, as wheels don’t go well on Kinder anyway. Walked the vast majority of the route from there. Which, I can attest, is a long way.

Me, Jules and Chris Webb headed off early doors as well, and blatted it as hard as possible. Chris was, according to himself “a passenger” as Jules and I navved. If he was a passenger, in the driving seat, with his foot planted firmly on the accelerator, that might have been true. He dragged us through 40 miles of grimness to finish in 7:41, smiling the entire way. I could’ve punched him if I had the energy. At some point I’ll get around to blogging about it, but that’s all you’re getting for the moment.

1st GDH Julien Minshull, Tim Budd, Chris Webb 7:41

27th GDH veterans Paul Skuse, Mark Harrison, Sue Clapham, Sikobe Litaba 12:42

38th Luke Holme, Ian Crutchley, Tim Snape, Dave Ashworth 14:40

Doctors Gate

A Des Race. Always good for a laugh if you don’t mind not knowing the actual route of the race until after it has been run. An AM/AL depending on your watch or your psychological profile, this little beast went around a lot of the nooks and cranny’s that we

know and love in the local area. I hope that the ground-nesting birds weren’t disturbed by this too much as the Curlews and Skylarks have just started nesting again. With some stonking climbs this was quite the race on which to test your climbing legs. The participants looked suitably knackered as they sat in the pub at the end supping pints of their favoured liquids. Thousand yard stares were cultivated, and generally a good time was had by some. Results looked a little like this….

28 Andy O 2:07:35

46 Mark D 2:21:31

47 Rob Murphy 2:26:47

54 Zoe B 2:32:01

70 Jason Hart 2:40:22

79 John S 2:48:08

?? Daz 2:56:59 who has no idea really what happened, when or how, only that he went past Cock hill at some point and is a bit scarred by the rest of the run having been a little outside his comfort zone. All I can say is well done for actually getting to the finish instead of finishing at your house 200 yards prior to it!

Dark and White Spring Series #2

Message by carrier pigeon from Pete Wallroth: Hi Tim, Lucy Wasinski and I did Spring series round 2 this morning. Cracking day and stunning route. Results not in yet but Lucy thinks about 1:24 and me 1:30something. 10.1 mile course.

Well – the results are indeed in now, the lovely race series is down in the White Peak and so Trail Running Central was a very busy place. It would seem that Lucy was 25th overall and 1st in her class, indeed in 1:24:27. Pete Wallroth was 63rd overall in 1:37:28 and was 30th in class.

SELCC prizes

Ah, it was the annual SELCC ball/prizegiving/knees up last week. We had a few people heading up to collect awards. I’ve seen the pictures, though I can’t actually see what people have won… the website doesn’t appear to be entirely in date, and me being me, I couldn’t really work it out. So I’ve taken a bit of a stab at it here, and if I’m wrong, so be it.

Kirsty Sharp 1st Lady

Stevie K – 1st V45

Jo Brack 1st FV50

Ezme Brack 1st U18?

Caitlin Swan 2nd U11

Woop! Amazing work over the winter all of you! We’ll all have to get out on Webby’s XC training again come October and keep those winning ways going.

Coniston 14 miler

Message from Tony Hillier by Morse: Two GDH runners at Coniston 14ml, Emma Rettig and Tony Hillier. Tough. Now that bloody hurt. Incline after incline to 11ml then a 1ml stinker, legs well gone. Steady 8min mls for sub 1:53. 1st V70 Well done GDH Emma Rettig as well. As expected, a 1st V70… Standard. Good running from both of you – hopefully Emma is getting back into full on running training again after some time based on a bike.

Parkrun

Technically the only new PB this week was for Caitlin Rice (who is still marked down as GDH instead of Ribble Valley…. maybe she should be down as “friend of GDH?”) but there were some faster times this week, showing that conditions are improving and as the ground hardens up, so do the runners. Consolidated report is here. .

Other stuff