“That’s October boxed-off then” Weekly Report

Good evening Harriers! I thought I was in for an easy week, but as ever, information keeps rolling in!  There’s lots of Facebook activity about races for 2020, so much so that I’m sure some people must be on commission!  Time to start thinking about next year, is it going to be a scattergun of random races?  Are you focussing on one or two biggies?  Or are you still just coming to terms with November?

Also, worth remembering that the Champs races for next year will likely be announced towards the end of November when they’re been given the stamp of approval by the Committee, so don’t fill up your calendars too quickly!

Here is the report.

New York Marathon

After ticking off the Manor Park Marathon in August, Bartek Verde has just finished one of the more low-key marathons in New York.  I’ve just looked at the tracker and he got round in a solid 4:13:26.  Great work!

 

White Rose Ultra 300

No, that’s not a typo, this is actually a thing.  300 miles.  I’m not even sure if Riccardo Giussani is a Harrier, but I think he is.  He seems to have taken on the White Rose Ultra 300 on his own which is ten laps of the standard WRU route.  With a 30, 60, 100, 150 and now 300 mile option the number of laps on this race seems to be growing each year, when will it end!  I’m not sure how he’s doing but last thing I saw on social media he was pushing through the 30-mile laps. What an epic achievement (or what a stupid thing to do – you decide!)

Tatton Park Half

Wendy McMahon took on the Tatton park half and sounds like it was a great race!  Hope she celebrated with some slap-up nosh in Knutsford afterwards!

I did Tatton park half today in 1:51:09. It’s a 2-lap course around the park. I’ve never been before so when my friend dropped out on Wednesday, I snapped her offer straight away. It was cold and very foggy which meant I couldn’t take in the views as much as I wanted.  I’d definitely recommend it as a race as it’s a lovely place, decent price for a T-shirt, medal, water stops, free parking and refreshments after.  It’s not just the PB time I was happy with, I am more chuffed that when the place was offered, a 13.1 mile race didn’t faze me at all!  I didn’t see any other GDHs there and the website doesn’t search under club. 

Peak Raid

Peak Raid is back after the sad announcement the series had been pulled due to problems with permissions which seems all too common at the moment.  We deployed a few Harriers to check out the event with John Stephenson taking on the White Peak correspondent duties:

 A small, high quality turnout from the Harriers were at the first of the new Peak Raid events today. The venue was Alstonefield near Ashbourne, the event territory was the limestone dales. Dave Hogg, Nick Ham, Sue and Chris Clapham and muggins ran.

Weather was very fair but boy was the going wet underfoot in the low lying flat fields, muddier than a muddy Manchester XC.

I think the results were

Nick and Dave 380 points apiece

Muggins 340 points(finished 40 mins early!) Sue and Chris 200 (walking).

Next event is at Great Longstone in early December.

John (finished too soon) Stephenson

Lake District Weekend

A gaggle of Harriers have been partying up north staying at Skiddaw House which seems to be a bit of an off-grid, out of signal retreat, something we all need nowadays.  I’m not sure exactly what happened but it looks like Skiddaw and Blencathra were ticked off and probably a lot of booze! Great stuff.

 

Yorkshire Three peaks

When I read this report I started to worry about the “run your age in miles” approach, because let’s face it, that’s only going to get harder.  All fine for these youngsters though as Emma Peters reports:

Quick email as I’m currently waiting for food in a pub, but I’ve just completed Yorkshire 3 Peaks with some uni friends. One of them decided to run 27 miles for her 27th birthday, so that’s what we did!

All went remarkably well. Bad visibility throughout but no rain!! Total distance 43km, strava still syncing with bad internet so unsure of elevation etc., but in any case a lot of up, a lot of down and a lot of claggy mud and slippy slabs. Not my favourite route on account of the slabs, but to be expected with the popularity of the 3 Peaks I suppose. Overall I’m super proud- this was by far and away my longest run.

Parkrun Corner

Someone decided it would be a good idea to have a big fire at Manor Park so our favourite parkrun was off, but as if that would stop us! Click HERE for the consolidated report.

Chris Webb picked up first place at Oldham with a straight 18 minutes! Fantastic! The Munday family had an extreme reaction to Glossop parkrun being off and went to Germany to run the Ziegelwiese parkrun.  Epic parkrun tourism.

Top Mileage and climbing

It’s an incredible one this week folks, almost like someone’s altimeter was broken.  Whilst credit needs to be given to Paul Peters for his solid 96.4km for the week, David Chrystie-Lowe clocked up a couple of summits of Everest with 17,403m (but not a patch on his 41,667m last week).  Even a ten-miler along the flat trail gave an impressive 9,556m of climbing which even Kilian Jornet would be proud of!

Wot else is ‘appenin’?

I’m a bit short of pics this week so hired in some professional models to try and make running look glamourous.  Here are the Bleaklow Boys, what do you reckon?

No excuses for not training throughout the week Harriers.  Starting this week there’s now three club sessions to keep those legs moving on these dark nights.

Tuesdays: You know the drill for the ever-popular Tuesday speed session.  A variety of tarmac and trail pounding led by Coach Jeroen, what better way to finish off a Tuesday (or your legs).

Wednesday:  The now-named XC Webbinars are back in force starting 6th November.  If you like muddy misery, then get yourself to Bankswood Park at 7pm armed with a headtorch, vest (if you’re tough enough), shorts and suitably grippy footwear.  The first of the sessions is a 6 x half-mile XC loop hard with a two-minute rest, during which your wet shivering hands will be attempting to grip a pencil and fill in your time on Mr Webb’s spreadsheet ready for the full statistical analysis afterwards.

Also worth mentioning that it’s match 2 of the Manchester Area Cross Country League (MACCL) on Saturday at Kenworthy Woods.  Chris Webb will be there with numbers for anyone who didn’t collect theirs at Wythenshawe. Don’t forget: you use the same number all season!

Thursday: After all those hard efforts it’ll be time for a Thursday social either out on the fells or road.  Perhaps a few post-run pub visits on the lead-up to Christmas would be good to help keep the numbers up?  Throw out suggestions for routes or pubs!

It also looks like the Sunday ten-mile Longdendale trail session is becoming a firm-fixture in diaries.  Get some flat social miles in!

Time Trial Nav Courses: For a few weeks now, Tim Budd has been plotting….  no, not an evil plan, but some really great navigation time trials out there in the hills.  Dust of your compass and give them a go.  You also get to see all the efforts overlayed so you can see just how lost you were.

GDH Christmas Party 2019

A date for your diaries – We’ve swept the Scouts out of their hut to make way for the GDH Christmas Party on Sunday 15th December 2pm – bring food to share and drinks.  There might be some Howard Town offerings like previous years (we’ll have to raid the brewery if not).  There will be champs prizes and the prestigious bombed out trophy.

There’ll also be a club run in the morning where you all get dressed up in silly stuff and run up a hill. But let’s face it, that’s pretty much what we all do every week anyway!!

Keep sending in the reports and pics to gdhweeklyreports@gmail.com