“It’s relay season” weekend report

Thanks to Wendy McMahon, Immy “the pixie of doom” Trinder and Guy Riddell for the updates this week

Rochdale half/10k

Apparently there was a half and a 10k at Rochdale. The times were pretty quick, which only goes to show that even when youre racing at Rochdale, you still want to get out of there as soon as possible….

Tony Hillier – 1:48:12

Wendy McMahon – 1:55:32

10k – Kirsty Sharp – 39:08

HBMR

Immy was volunteered to write the HBMR report……. Today Glossopdale competed in the Hodgson Brothers Mountain Relay, with an open team comprising Tim Budd, Chris Webb, Mark D, Mark H, Jamie Helmer, Paul Peters, Dan Stinton and myself. Dan and I ran Leg 1 – Patterdale to Hartsop 6.7km / 440m. We set off fairly conservatively and had a pretty good ascent, despite the fact that I was suffering somewhat with an injury I managed to acquire during Groovy Kinder Love last week. Unfortunately, when it came to the descent, the scale of the pain in my knee was matched only by my ability to moan and swear about it. Massive thanks to Dan for supporting me both physically and mentally as I hopped and bum slid through a significant quantity of sheep poo to the bottom of the hill. We finished in a slightly gutting (read: soul destroying) 54 minutes and in 53rd place. I have a less detailed report of the remaining legs, but the rest of the team certainly managed some impressive damage limitation: Jamie and Paul flew round Leg 2 – Hartstop to Kirkstone 11km / 890m – gaining 10 places to come in in 43rd place in 1 hour 26. They handed over to Mark and Mark  (Marky Mark?) who had the mammoth task of the Leg 3 ascent -Kirkstone to Sykeside 7.5km / 570m – which was apparently easy work as they gained another 4 places in 1 hour 6 minutes. We were all back at the finish in time to see Tim and Chris storm in from Leg 4 – Sykeside to Patterdale 11km / 900m – in 1 hour 15. This gave us a total time of 4 hours 43 minutes and 34th place overall out of 70 teams. Most importantly, there was beer and cake at the end and everyone seemed to be smiling. Despite being devastated by my performance, I had a brilliant day and felt really privileged to be on a team with such a top bunch of runners – thanks everyone for having me, to Tim for organising and to my mom and stepdad for road support. Can’t wait for the next one!

Chester marathon

Guy Riddell very kindly sent this in by telegram…. Six Harriers ran the Chester Marathon this morning. Will & Steve had one job, to help me and Jim to 3 hour 30 pace and the glory of PBs. Meanwhile Luke and Ian were running their first marathons so guaranteed PBs and not sure of what would constitute a ‘good’ time. The first group of four ran together for the first half marathon, running pretty comfortably at 7:50/mile roughly. We were caught by Luke who started a good minute behind at about 10 miles, he had no idea what pace he was doing and was possibly disoriented by the inability to get past marshals to run the wrong way. Although numbers were all correctly transferred, not all of us bothered to correct the names on our bibs. Took me a while to get used to being called Alan, but Will got some very odd looks, along with some enthusiastic encouragement running as Natalie. 14 miles in I tried to push on for a few miles, only to see Luke bound past like a puppy who just swallowed a 6-pack of red bull. My kick on became hard to sustain after a few miles, but Steve yelling ‘come on Alan!’ while bounding ahead then waiting for me as I chugged behind. Expecting to catch Luke up any moment, I remained just on 3:30 pace right up to 24 miles. Luke appeared up ahead and Steve trotted ahead to hurl abuse at him in the closing miles. I did try to catch up but the legs weren’t so keen so just settled in to get to the finish, which I did with a 3 minute PB, a good minute behind Luke and Steve. The other three finished a few minutes later, so all 6 Harriers finished in less than 10 minutes of each other. Star of the day is undoubtedly Luke, incredible marathon debut, especially as he says he hated the roadiness of it all. Special mention to Steve & Will, both well capable of getting sub 3:15 today, but entirely focussed on helping their mates round.

Luke ‘Roadrunner’ Holme 3:31:02

Steve ‘Fartypants’ Page 3:31:35

Guy ‘Alan’ Riddell 3:32:19

Ian ‘Lidl’ Crutchley 3:40:29

Will ‘Natalie’ Mather 3:40:44

Jim ‘Sunbeam’ Talbot 3:40:45

Target Sprint

English Champs, or some such this weekend, I do believe. Skusey the skusinator Skuse appears to have netted himself a bronze medal, Andy Burnett was almost certainly there, but I haven’t actually had any information beyond this picture…. Paul seems to know what he’s doing on a podium these days.

Nick Ham

CMP Trail Long completed in 6:38:41, 150th out of 238 finishers. I’m quite pleased with that, especially as I ran half the race with a gouged right knee and blood trickling down my leg. Those HOKA ‘trail’ shoes of mine are lethal – worse than road shoes. I got overtaken a bit on the technical downhills as a result as I bimbled and struggled. I caught them back up on the climbs, though, and picked off a few more on the final descent and run in to the finish with the benefit of a Snickers bar sending fuel to the legs.
The first climb of 1k in 5k was mostly single file with the one at the front setting the pace. That probably saved me from overdoing it and blowing up.

Suffice to say that it seems that Nick isn’t quite endorsing Hoka at the moment. But does seem to have taken it upon himself to rack up as many injuries as possible in the 2018 season….

12k Snowdon Challenge

Claire Campbell has been around and about Snowdonia this week, and found time in her busy sightseeing and general mooching schedule to run a 12k challenge around a fairly challenging area with her adorable if slightly veteran pooch. Looks like it could have been a 1:54 finish – but whos counting on a day like that?

Nav course

Nice to see people who did the nav courses over the last few weeks getting out and finding their navigational feet around the local area. Thanks to Alabama for her pictures – great to hear that you’re getting out and having fun.