Top effort! 
Beer time!
1 Like
1:35 Liversedge Half. Savage course, weather not nice but not as apocalyptic as I expected. I fell apart a bit after the miles 7-9 climbs and it was hang on time after.
Nice to get out there again, and suffer!
18 Likes
Well done @TROSaracen that’s a solid time on that course. I did look out for you but didn’t see tour number. I was as slow as I thought I would be in 1:53 but good to get out there. The last bit with a headwind was the only time the weather got on my nerves.
15 Likes
Good man
Cheers @pacha well done on your time.
I lost a bit of time, nearly went for the wade across that ford but bailed and had to double back and use the bridge, lol.
Well done both. Couldn’t imagine racing today!
2 Likes
Well done @pacha 
1 Like
Well done both, can’t have been nice today.
1 Like
XC Race on Sunday.
Decided I wouldn’t buy spikes for my first race. Weather was minging. My Peregrine trail shoes actually meant I had pretty decent footing as it was very sloppy. 3 lap course, first km I really should have held off and not gone at the stupid pace (3:40) alot of others did. Quite a few sections you were really running into a horrible wind. Got settled into a pace with ‘Elliott’ on my shoulder I tried to surge a few of the uphills to kill him off. Every Marshall and quite a few spectators were cheering him on like they knew him. Last lap my legs were toast. Pace died off and I lost about 5-6 places. I also didn’t know quite where the finish was so if I was gonna have a surge I didn’t know how long I needed to hold it for.
42:50 for 10km. Came 52 out of 122. A sub 18min 5km TT on Friday and then a very tough football game on Saturday were definitely the cause of the blown legs on the last lap. Highest placed Unattached runner 
Think I prefer road races!
19 Likes
I have Bramley 20 miler (road) this Sunday. It’s a deferral from 2yrs ago. 3yrs ago I went 2.54, I’d be lucky to go 3.15 nowadays.
Meant to be going to Mum’s on the weekend but could go after the race. Jury is out 
7 Likes
To go along with my existential crisis. Decided I’m pulling out of the 100 milers for this year. I need a confidence boosting season and continuing to bang my head against this wall when I’m clearly not ready just won’t help.
Plan is:
Endure 24 June 18th. (hoping to improve on last year’s 70 miles)
NC110km in Oct. DNF’d this last year and would like to give it another shot but if the season doesn’t go well, I’ll drop to the 56km.
That leaves some mid season options. I am already for The RAT 64 miler on July 15th but it’s way down in Cornwall.
There is the Serpent Trail 50/100km on July 2nd. It’s £95 but TBH, I’d probably spend more than that on logistics for The RAT, whereas I could drive to Serpent Trail on the morning of the race. I don’t have to do either of those of course.
If everything goes well, a late season option ‘might’ be Wendover Woods 50, as my intention is to enter Arc of Attrition again but not sure want to push anything.
15 Likes
Sounds sensible, you won’t have it hanging over you as well.
1 Like
Even without the 100 your dance card is much fuller than mine.
4 Likes
Didn’t know whether to post this here, the RANT thread or the COVID-19 one…
Did a 10K off-road race yesterday, it was pretty flat, the largest elevation was caused by a bridge over a road, and the surfaces were pretty good. So much so, that when I noticed one of my laces were undone I decided to leave it and I never felt particularly worried it was going to come off.
My RANT relates to the fact they chose to do waves which they set off 2 minutes apart. Yet they still let everyone meet at the same place at the same time. All they seem to do was make the later waves wait around for quite a while. I don’t know why they couldn’t have let the waves start immediately after each other. There was less than 200 of us. The local parkrun has 300 doing a mass start.
Wave 1 was for sub-40 and I was being very honest, put myself into Wave 2 (40-45). Spoiler: My time was 42:47, so I was spot on with my self ranking. I’d like to think that in a flat, fast road race I’d be pushing for sub-40, but today that wasn’t going to happen.
However, kind of what I feared would happen happened, despite being very much mid-Wave 2 in theory, within a few 100m I was off the front and pulling away. So it pretty much turned into a solo time trial. I overtook one lady from Wave 1 around half way (to be fair the wave was for sub-40 plus podiums and about 5 ladies set off in that group) and had 2 others in my sight who finished about 15s ahead by the time I finished.
I set off a little fast and was paying for it, but psychologically I felt a little cheated. Although there were people ahead of me to chase down, I knew I had 2 minutes on them, so almost if I could see them then I was already beating them (it was quite twisty / lots of trees so couldn’t see that far head), I didn’t have to actually overtake them.
The results only have the chip time, so it’s difficult to work out, but I think I beat around 6 people who were in wave 1. There were about 3 people who finished within 20s of me based on chip time, so if I had sent off in wave 1 I’d have had much more of a race and perhaps might have pulled a little more out of the bag.
Anyway, it was only my 2nd ever standalone 10K, and I took about 30 seconds of my (very weak) PB, which was from a road race many years ago.
12 Likes
Yeah not a fan of wave races or ‘start when you want’ chip time stuff - for running anyway, weirdly i don’t care for tri. You want to be in an actual race, otherwise it’s just a time trial.
Still a good start of season benchmark. There’ll be loads of 10ks now in the spring if you wanted to have a crack at pushing that below 40. That’s a really nice benchmark i think.
When i first started running, i still remember my first 5km under 20 and my first 10 under 40. There’s something psychologically daunting about running kms that start with a 3!
3 Likes
Yeah cos its a 'kin long way!!!.. and you need to be taking (on) water and food.
With you on the time trial stuff. Hate it for running. Hopefully shouldn’t see much more of it now.
1 Like
Harwich Roadrunners do a 5k series where you start effectively in handicap order. Wave goes every minute, effectively you start so you are handicapped to finish at 40 mins, so if you ran 21 mins last time you start at 19 mins.
So you set off in 3’s and 4’s then over the race the entire field converges to finish close to 40 minutes. It’s actually quite different and pretty good fun.
6 Likes
Haven’t decided if I’m doing Bramley 20miler on Sunday or not yet. Might not be up to me, just had this.
Dear Runner,
*We will be carrying out a course inspection at lunchtime Saturday. Until then we will not understand the impact to either the school or the course of any damage/impact following the storm. *
*We are also aware that there are strong winds forecast for Sunday during the race which will also factor into the decision making to cancel or to continue with the race. *
*The safety of our runners and our volunteers is our priority. *
*Please do keep an eye on our Facebook page Reading Roadrunners Races as any update will be posted there. *
Bramley Race Committee
3 Likes
I’m wondering what will happen for the half I’ve got in Blackpool. Although this is a breeze compared to normal for Blackpool 
As above I’m supposed to be doing a half in Blackpool on Sunday, organisers are still saying it’s on but the route might be tweaked so we basically don’t get swept off the promenade and into the sea!
Still a yellow wind forecast. Combined with this and the recent lurgy this is basically going to be a training run, I was thinking of aiming for 94 minute pace, which is hopefully not far off 70.3 but it’s going to be really hard to gauge the effort.
I’d probably sack it off if it was local but I’ve also booked accommodation that isn’t refundable. I’ll see what’s what in the morning and if the A66 is open.
4 Likes