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Busy in the hills today! “Men” with guns, a woman in wellies offering unsolicited nav advice, someone accusing us of jogging (it’s true, we were jogging), several startled hares and a rogue snowball. Other than that, nothing else happened.
Here’s the (bi)weekly report!
The (Virtual) Spine Race
They don’t come much longer than the 268-mile Spine Race! As with many cancelled races they’ve set up a virtual option and Wioleta Wydrych has almost unimaginably decided it was a good idea. The virtual race requires you to complete the distance within a month. Here’s Wioleta’s update on her progress so far.
Here is a little update about my January’s goal/challenge 🙂
My progress towards spine virtual challenge goal for January – run (or walk if you have that much time🤣) 268 miles (431km) in January
I’ve been resisting to sign up for any virtual races until I realised that nothing will go ahead in the near future and I signed up for the first thing that came to my attention – virtual spine race challenge. I thought “it would be nice to take part in that race one day (in a very very far future that is 😜), let’s start from running that distance within one month”. I’m not sure if it was the best decision as until now my weekly average mileage was about 40km/week, now I needed to double it. We all know about the 10% rule and I don’t want to be injured. I took yoga super-seriously, made friends with a foam roller and bought a small electric handheld massager (the best investment ever).
Today I’m a week away from the end of this challenge and with help of many running buddies from the club I’m further ahead than I thought I would be. It’s 24th of January and I covered 365 kilometres out of 431. Only 66 kilometres to go!
That sounds easier than it is 😜 Good thing is that I’m free from any pains (not counting the pain while foam rolling), but every single day I’ve spent from 20 to 60 minutes doing yoga, foam rolling and massaging my muscles. After every single run, I stretched and massaged my muscles. I’m actually hoping that it will become a habit to look after my muscles so well as It makes a massive difference to my form and the way I feel when running. Now I just need to decide whether I will run little and often this week or maybe leave some bigger mileage for the end. 50km run just to make a challenge more challenging :P?
Ps. Huge thanks to all of you who helped me to tick some miles already 😊
Front Page News
No-one gets as lost as much as Luke Holme – mainly because he can’t see properly out of his dinosaur costume. He’s made front-page news this week with his epic 100-mile challenge taking in two 40-mile loops of (roughly) the Glossop Mountain Rescue Team (GMRT) area followed by another 20-mile loop finishing at Manor Park! All in support of GMRT this is a massive challenge and I’m sure GDH will be out to support. Keep your eye’s on Facebook for details!
Articles / Knowledge base
If you cast your mind back to a couple of weeks ago (I know this can feel like an eternity in lockdown) we’d had a couple of club members provide an article on their preferred topics. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve spent the last two weeks eating an enormous amount of bread to prepare me for running a 2:22 marathon like Rick Gwilt. With an extra inch on the waistline already, I’m not sure it’s working!
We have two new articles for you this week! First up, is a piece on Mountain Marathons by Imogen Trinder, covering all things OMM. It’s time to dust off your compasses and get out there! I do have to note that I have stood with Immy at Bleaklow Head with the intention of heading towards Grinah stones whilst she became quite agitated that a compass set to go west seemed to be guiding us in completely the wrong direction! But she seems to have it all sussed for the OMM:
Mountain Marathons: An Overview
Some of you may have noticed it’s snowing. This article from Paul Skuse (with input from Tim Budd) is a well-timed guide to the all-important winter kit:
If you do forget to take any kit though, it’s good to know the ‘elf&safety teams are out there making sure we’re aware of the dangers in the hills…
Rather than lose these valuable articles we’ve now created a section on the website – the Knowledge Base. If any members want to send in an article, then please send to gdhweeklyreports@gmail.com and they can be included in the weekly report and also added to the articles section of the website. Check it out HERE.
Just to wet the tastebuds we’ll be adding Marie Williamson’s piece on running back-to-back marathons soon!
Local Challenges / Fell Races
No doubt most of you will have seen Ian Crutchley’s post last week about the new section on the website recording a number of long-lost (nearly) local races and challenges. There’s been a massive amount of research put into these so big thanks for Ian for writing them. There’s a couple more old routes/challenges that are currently being worked on, so keep your eyes on the website, and of course, get out there and give them a go! Don’t forget to let us know how you get on!
Check out the challenges HERE.
AGM / Committee
I’m sure most of you will have seen this anyway, but here is a copy of the Facebook post from the Committee on the AGM. As it’s on Microsoft Teams there can’t be as much chair throwing as a usual AGM, but we’ll still get all the latest Committee info and as a bonus you get to have a sneak peek at everyone’s houses on their video background! Get this into your filofaxes:
Attention all club members! (post updated 19/01 with Teams link and constitution info)
We recently had a committee meeting and following feedback from members about the notice given, please be advised the AGM has been postponed and will now take place on Weds 17th February at 19:30. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
We would like to share some information with you ahead of the virtual AGM:
Agenda – This will be on the website imminently, so please check there for details
Motions – please email any motions to club.secgdh@gmail.com by 10th Feb 2021
RSVP – please let us know if you will be attending by commenting below, or emailing club.secgdh@gmail.com. Hopefully by going virtual, it will enable many more people to be able to join!
Committee posts and vacancies: The posts of 1 x Officer (Chair), and 2 x ordinary member will be vacant and need filling. However, you may also express an interest in any of the officer or committee member roles. These are the committee roles:
Chair
Secretary
Treasurer
Ordinary Committee Member x 6
Please express interest in advance by emailing club.secgdh@gmail.com by 1st Feb 2021 however if n-oone has expressed interest in advance, you may stand on the night if you wish. If more than one person wishes to stand for a role or for the number of committee member positions, then you will be asked to speak for up to 2 mins about why you wish to stand, and a vote will take place. (This will be done virtually on the night and will be fully anonymous and transparent). If not then the expression will simply require a proposer and seconder.
For the role of Chair, we ask that you provide a short written statement with your expression of interest. There is a role description for Chair on the Committee page of the website.
The current constitution is now available on the commitee page of the GDH website. As per the motion agreed at last years AGM, the constitution is currently under review and will be shared with members in due course.
We will be using MS Teams as the platform for the meeting, you don’t need any specific software installed – we will share guidance in due course.
Joining link: https://www.google.com/url…
Greg is going to share some dates/times where we can try teams with you if you haven’t used it before and want to see how it works/what it looks like!
Captains: We would also like to invite club captain(s) to manage relay teams (hopefully one day later this year there may be relay races to enter again!). These may be fell, trail or road relays – part of this role will be to identify relevant relays of interest to club members. We are not necessarily looking for both mens/womens captains; but if more than one person would like the role then it can be shared.
Hope to see you on the 17th Feb!
From the Committee
Annual Subs Due
New membership secretary, Vicki Hamilton, is after your money. I’m a guilty party in not yet paying but let’s get it done! Here’s the details:
GDH membership subs are £10 per annum or £5 per annum for those members who are unwaged. EA affiliation is an additional cost of £16 per annum but the club contributes £5 to cost of EA membership for each club member.
To summarise:
GDH membership only waged £10
GDH membership only unwaged £5,
GDH plus EA waged £21
GDH plus EA unwaged £16
Under 16s are free unless they want EA membership for cross country.
If you could transfer the subs to the GDH bank account and email me at membership.secgdh@gmail.com to let me know you have paid, that would be very helpful.
NOT Coached Session L3W3
Here’s Coach Jeroen’s session for this week!
Before getting stuck into your challenge for the coming week, I want to share a very sad milestone. At the start of this week, I received a message from Dan Stinton (no, that is NOT the sad milestone!) telling me that one of the markers on the Glossopdale Running Track had been pulled out of the ground. I cannot even say that I was angry but more saddened . Saddened that anyone can get some perverted pleasure from vandalising a community facility that is used and enjoyed by many.
As soon as he made me aware, I got straight in touch with DCC who would send someone over straight away. Dan kindly put the marker on the side of the path. At the time of writing this, the marker is not yet back and has been removed. I have not been able to have confirmation that it has been picked up by DCC yet. Fingers crossed that it is not lost.
Now, time to focus on something positive, you ever increasing running fitness. This week, an easy one , at least for those who use Running Watches set to Metric (i.e. Km instead of Miles). .
Run 5 x 1000m as the first 800m at ~10K pace and the final 200m accelerate to ~3K pace. Take a 3-minute recovery jog before you repeat. Please note, this is a continuous set so no static rest after each rep but straight from rep to jog and back to the next rep!!!
If running this set “on the clock”, you can amend the set as e.g. 4 minutes at 10K and 1 minute at 3K pace. Your pace is about 7/10 (able to speak in short, broken sentences) for the first part of each rep and finishing at 8/10 RPE (able to speak couple of words).
Running this set properly takes a fair amount of effort but if I have underestimated your fitness, feel free to add another rep but ONLY if you maintain the effort of your first and second rep. If not, call it a day and that way you lock-in the full benefit of your efforts.
You probably get a little sick of reminding you (and that is a good thing as you know it now) but please do a good warm-up. At least 10 minutes easy jog followed by some quite intense drills to raise your heart rate and get your body ready for this exercise. Consider, 3x 30 seconds high knees increasing the cadence, skips with arm-swings, 4 or 5 strides (60-100m), and finish with some leg-swings while you are getting your breath back, before the first rep of the main set.
Take care, especially if there is snow and ice, and enjoy!
Anything Else? Parkrun Corner?
Sadly not, that’s it for this week folks. Keep sending stuff in to gdhweeklyreports@gmail.com
Here’s a picture from the hills (including the sun, Paul Skuse and Chris Jackson‘s finger)
