Who ate all the beans?

This week seems to have been a relatively quiet week for Team GDH – still some racing and an awful lot of training and reccying which suggests that there are going to be some awesome race reports over the coming weeks and months.

Burbage Trail Race (courtesy of Pete Wallroth and Nick Ham)

From Pete…well, first things first. We all went to the right Burbage – had it been left to Skusey we’d probably be eating lunch in the Fox House at Longshaw right now.   A foggy Errwood reser greeted us as a good showing of GDH arrived for what was the inaugural Burbage Trail race. It’s organised by a dude who we’ll refer to as Super Mario on account of his hilarious race briefing in broken English/Polish (or was it Italian), which had the waiting runners in stitches most notably Caity who has never looked less composed on a start line.

Trail race he said! Bit muddy he said! Yes Mario. This was a trail race for fellrunners in every way. Bog, fog and some pretty arduous climbs thrown in that any fellrunner would rub their hands together at.   Out of Errwood, up onto the trails and a cracking climb up onto Burbage Edge trig before descending past a rather bemused looking refreshment station of 3 cups and a bottle of water, back around and down back to the sailing club. A lollipop route as Nick Ham referred to it. 

All in all, a really good morning race on a great, well marked, brilliantly marshalled course which I would recommend for next year if it’s on again.  The results were as follows:

• 2 Caity Rice 53:06 & 1st female
• 4 James Knapper 54:04
• 5 Steve Crossman 54:44 & 1st MV50
• 6 Paul Skuse 55:48 & 1st MV40
• 13 Kirsty Sharp 59:56
• 15 Pete Nicholson 1:01:06
• 19 Pete Wallroth 1:03:26
• 25 Clive Hope 1:09 & 1st MV60
• 37 Nick Ham 1:15:05

And from Nick….Thanks to Paul ‘full beans’ Skuse giving a ‘heads-up’ on Facebook, I (and probably plenty of other Glossopdale Harriers) entered this new 10+k race from the Errwood Sailing Club in the Goyt Valley. GDH enjoyed a good turn-out as a result.

I rocked up bright and early while the going was good (i.e. head not trying to spin itself off my shoulders), and by Jove I got away with it. On the start line there was discussion about the narrowness of the one-person-width trod up through the woods after the right turn just outside the sailing club’s entrance. The need for “full beans” was agreed in order to avoid a bottleneck, so full beans it was, including from ‘yours truly’. I immediately noticed that I was sadly lacking in the beans department as Glossopdale’s finest, plus a few others, rapidly pulled away. We soon turned right and climbed in single file on a soft carpet of brown, decaying pine needles, weaving left and right, up and down, but mostly up. I was barely keeping up with the runner in front by the time we exited the woods. Now that I wouldn’t be holding anyone up I could slow to a recovery walk as my cardiovascular system felt as if it was about to explode. I’d blown my beans in an ill-advised brief blast of glory with over 10k still to go. Only charred bean remnants remained to power me for a survival walk-shuffle on the long climb to Burbage Edge.

There were some steep climbs and there was plenty of peaty mud up to halfway and the beginning of the descent back to the Goyt Valley, where the drinks station and support in the middle of the moor came as a nice surprise. In fact there was a lot of really good support and marshals to ensure we went the right way at any path junctions.

The descent back to the Goyt Valley (a well-known path to me) is technical and rocky, forcing me to hold back a bit to maintain composure and not lose control catastrophically. Even so I was still able to overtake. I must have recovered from my early over-exuberance. Once in the valley it was a long run along mucky trods on the right-hand side of the River Goyt back to our outward route, where a sharp left brought us back (eventually – I was really blowing out my a*se by this point) to the finish.

Although advertised as a trail race, this is definitely more like a fell race. Race Organiser Mario hinted as much before the start. It’s so much better for it. It would be a brilliant race to have in the GDH champs next year. Mario said that he hopes to introduce a Goyt Valley series next year, with races ranging from 5k to half marathon. I can’t wait. Judging by the organisation of this inaugural race, they will be fantastic. (Good luck with getting the permissions is all I can say).

Marmot Dark Mountains (A sleep deprived race report from Wales courtesy of Dan Stinton)

Immy and I took on the last ever edition (by the current organisers) of the Marmot Dark Mountains – a navigation event that took place this year in the Northern Arenigs.  The race is very similar format to the OMM (Original Mountain Marathon), in that there are various categories and you have to navigate your way to checkpoints in any order you choose to maximise points (Score) or alternatively in a defined order as fast as you can (Linear).  The OMM is spread over two days with a camp in-between, but Marmot is done in one hit over night in total darkness for all competitors.  You have to carry full kit (tent, sleeping bag, stove etc.) so I’d been frantically buying/borrowing everything over the last few weeks – nothing like proper preparation!  We chose Medium Score which meant we had ten hours from a staggered start at 20:42 to bag as many points as possible.

The terrain was horrific, just one boggy, squidgy, unrunnable mess after another, barely any paths, or really any features to help with navigation, especially in the dark.  We stuck it out, ate lots of pizza, toasted sandwiches and Babybels and came back feeling pretty pleased with how it went.  It may have been a big hike due to kit and terrain but navigation went well and we covered around 29km in all with a few mins to spare and came in 17th out of 25 teams in our category.  Apparently we had the biggest smiles at the end too!

We bumped into Tim Culshaw who was on the A-class with John Ryan (36.5km completed in 4th in 13:27) and Rob Taylor from Pennine but looking at the results he got DQ for something but no idea what.   So yeah, run around getting lost in the dark for hours.  It’s fun! 

Lyme Park Night Run

Paul and Liam Amos did it…that’s all I know however I really hope they took advantage of the excuse to wear neon facepaints, lycra AND fairy lights.

Parkrun Corner

Harriers were in action at a number of different parkrun locations this weekend:  Oldham (Alice W.), Hyde (Sean P and Tony H.), Marple  (half of Family Swan and Andy F.), Burnage (Rose G.), Glossop (loads), Lancaster (Paul P.),  Kew Woods (David and Holly M.) and Penistone (Andy B.).

A special shout out goes to Jacqui Chrystie-Lowe this week for what can only be described as an awesome performance at Glossop parkrun. Not only did she smash her PB by 1m5s (from 25.59 to 24.54), she also came first in this week’s age grade results with a massive 75.77%  – a percentage that many, many of us would be overjoyed with and, more importantly, a higher age grade than Mr C-L.  Phenomenal running, Jacqui (and thanks to Jeroen for the heads up).

It is also worth noting that the GDH parkrun Challenge moves to ‘L’ next weekend….see you all in Lyme Park sometime soon!  Check out Laurie’s rather impressive spreadsheet on FB for more details.

Other stuff

• It is the club AGM on Monday at The Oakwood starting at 7:30pm – see FB for the agenda etc.
• 2020 Subs are due – please make our lovely membership secretary happy by paying up by the end of the month (i.e. Friday) – again, all of the details are available on FB.
• If anyone has lost a digger, it has been found by a group of Harriers who were out braving the elements on a very wet and chilly Mickleden recce.  For more info contact Zoe, John, Matt, Kate, Jo B. or Charmayne.

We love reading and compiling tales of everyone’s racing exploits.  Assuming his DIY duties are over, Ian will be on report writing duty next week so please do lots more racing and don’t forget to tell him all about it at gdhweeklyreports@gmail.com.

Have a good week and happy running!