Relays! These are fun, as long as you don't have to organise anything about them.
As I've said in the past, this is the kind of event where the team captains have a lot of work to do - picking the best teams possible, of course, but there's all the stress about wondering who is actually going to turn up (whether they've said they will or not), registering the teams, choosing their running order, giving out the numbers, taking the entrance fees... So since I've had to do that for the last three years, it was very refreshing just to be able to turn up and run!
All the organisation was done by men's captain Sibbo and stand-in ladies' captain Karen (since Melissa was unavailable), and they did a good job of it. I was sent out on the first leg, which was a new experience for me - it's the one part of the race that doesn't feel like a relay at all. It's also a bit tricky at the start, with all the teams negotiating a couple of tight turns in a crowd (that'll be my excuse for losing a few seconds... James!). And with the legs only 3km in length, it's more like one rep of a training session than a race in itself... and least compared to our normal race distances.
So it was actually quite fun to go again. One team was incomplete, so Karen asked Lindsay and me if we'd like to finish it off. So after a little spectating to see how everyone else was doing (very difficult if you haven't kept track of who is in which team), I took over from Karen to run the D leg of team 111. This was more fun than the first time round - there were people to catch! (No more shall be said about the child who overtook me halfway round...) And surprisingly, I only ran about 20 seconds slower the second time than the first... at least, that's what my watch said. Unfortunately when I looked at the official results our team was labelled as Royston and had most of the leg times unrecorded. I passed the imaginary baton on to Lindsay, who finished her second leg of the night.
What I used to beat myself up over when I was choosing the teams, apart from considerations such as entering county teams or vet teams, was if I'd picked the right people. Since most of our fastest runners were unavailable, it was 'simply' a matter of Sibbo picking the 5 fastest men for the A team - and with me, Pete Scrowther, James Atkins, Tim Street and recently-returned-from-injury Nick Beresford, this was almost the perfect choice - only Pete Northover and Ollie Saville would have improved our time by only about 20 seconds. Paula, Jane and Tash were our speedy ladies who finished 4th - although my sloppy spectating thought they were 2nd. But then I thought the person Tash was having a sprint finish with was a little girl, and therefore a direct competitor, rather than a little boy with long blonde hair (another child - grrr). I think I'll stick to the competing rather than the spectating.
Friday, 25 July 2008
The mob match - 16 July
After the main competition of the midweek league, where both divisions run their own competitions, comes the Mob Match, a single race where all the clubs race against each other to see who's the best. Good in theory, but some clubs, ours included, never really takes part fully.
It makes sense, though. We spend so much effort trying to get as many runners as possible out for, for want of a better phrase, The Races That Matter, that it's asking a bit much to drag everyone to this one, too. I suppose it's a bit far for our club to travel to, too - we don't often have to go inside the M25 for a run.
A shame, in this case. Trent Park is quite pleasant, especially on such a sunny evening as this was, and the 20 or so of us who took part enjoyed it. I'd woken up that morning with a cold, and wouldn't have gone at all if I hadn't been due to hand out the MWL trophies after the race (a duty not in the job description of treasurer of the midweek league, but fun anyway).
Both the men and ladies came 6th on the night - nothing spectacular. But there was a collection of NHRR trophies from the league to give out:
Steve McKeown: 4th overall
Stuart Smithers: 2nd V60
Don Powell: 1st V70
Paula Adams: 1st overall and 1st V35
Jo Summers: 2nd V35
Astrid McKeown: 3rd V35
And for those who weren't there on the night, those awards will be coming to a club night near you soon!
It makes sense, though. We spend so much effort trying to get as many runners as possible out for, for want of a better phrase, The Races That Matter, that it's asking a bit much to drag everyone to this one, too. I suppose it's a bit far for our club to travel to, too - we don't often have to go inside the M25 for a run.
A shame, in this case. Trent Park is quite pleasant, especially on such a sunny evening as this was, and the 20 or so of us who took part enjoyed it. I'd woken up that morning with a cold, and wouldn't have gone at all if I hadn't been due to hand out the MWL trophies after the race (a duty not in the job description of treasurer of the midweek league, but fun anyway).
Both the men and ladies came 6th on the night - nothing spectacular. But there was a collection of NHRR trophies from the league to give out:
Steve McKeown: 4th overall
Stuart Smithers: 2nd V60
Don Powell: 1st V70
Paula Adams: 1st overall and 1st V35
Jo Summers: 2nd V35
Astrid McKeown: 3rd V35
And for those who weren't there on the night, those awards will be coming to a club night near you soon!
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
MWL4: 'If Only' territory
Bit of a delay between this race and writing about it: sorry, been too busy with going to Wimbledon to see the tennis, going to Wales to walk up a load of hills, getting a cold and then recovering from all of the above. Breaking the laptop didn't help, either.
So all the excitement I would have written about has evaporated by now. Which is a shame, because it's worth writing down that we all did tremendously well in the last midweek league race. This was clearly helped by the return of Neil Miller, who finished second even while injured: he could see he wasn't going to win, but would comfortably beat 3rd place (which turned out to be Steve McK - a very impressive run), so every so often he stopped to stretch, until 3rd place caught him up, at which point he'd race off again. Fantastic. Also fantastic were the ladies, taking 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th places, and - unsurprisingly - winning the ladies' race.
Of course, with this being our home race, it wasn't just the running we had to worry about - there was the course to arrange and sign, food to prepare and marshals to organise. I won't go on about it (it's difficult to, since I mainly saw it from a running point of view), but as far as I can tell it all went really well. Although something must have gone wrong with the marshals' briefing, since only about a quarter of them were cheering loudly for NHRR. And that's not counting the marshals that FVS kindly supplied.
FVS seemed a bit light on fast runners, which could have been for any number of reasons. Possibly they thought they didn't have to bother, since their Comet report after race 3 was all about how they were guaranteed promotion even before the final race, which put my back up a bit, especially since it wasn't true. Although I don't know whether it was the perceived arrogance or abuse of maths that bothered me the most. Actually, now I think about it, it is the maths - we'd have been proud if it was us in that strong a position. It was clear from the start that Shaftesbury Barnet hadn't really turned up either - and the results showed that they ended up down in 4th place, behind the men from Harlow.
Ah yes, the results. They came out after midnight, and there were plenty of people still up and waiting to see them. Unfortunately they weren't quite what we wanted to see. We'd regained the match point we lost in the last event, so it was all down to 'goal difference' again... but we hadn't quite managed enough. 18 points was the margin in the end - firmly in 'if only' territory. There are so many examples of how it could have all been different if only thingummybob hadn't been stuck at work, or on holiday, or injured. It wouldn't take too many cases of runners coming a few places lower than they should have done to make up the difference, too.
1 Fairlands Valley Spartans 1864 49
2 North Herts Road Runners 1882 49
3 Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers 2672 32
4 Harlow Running Club 2933 31
5 Bishops Stortford 3602 30
6 Broxbourne Runners 4969 19
7 Herts Phoenix 4915 14
But there's no point feeling guilty, or dwelling on what might have been. We got promoted - hurrah! - and get to race in the big league again next season, against Garden City Runners, St Albans, Orion and Barnet.
And Spartans, of course.
So all the excitement I would have written about has evaporated by now. Which is a shame, because it's worth writing down that we all did tremendously well in the last midweek league race. This was clearly helped by the return of Neil Miller, who finished second even while injured: he could see he wasn't going to win, but would comfortably beat 3rd place (which turned out to be Steve McK - a very impressive run), so every so often he stopped to stretch, until 3rd place caught him up, at which point he'd race off again. Fantastic. Also fantastic were the ladies, taking 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th places, and - unsurprisingly - winning the ladies' race.
Of course, with this being our home race, it wasn't just the running we had to worry about - there was the course to arrange and sign, food to prepare and marshals to organise. I won't go on about it (it's difficult to, since I mainly saw it from a running point of view), but as far as I can tell it all went really well. Although something must have gone wrong with the marshals' briefing, since only about a quarter of them were cheering loudly for NHRR. And that's not counting the marshals that FVS kindly supplied.
FVS seemed a bit light on fast runners, which could have been for any number of reasons. Possibly they thought they didn't have to bother, since their Comet report after race 3 was all about how they were guaranteed promotion even before the final race, which put my back up a bit, especially since it wasn't true. Although I don't know whether it was the perceived arrogance or abuse of maths that bothered me the most. Actually, now I think about it, it is the maths - we'd have been proud if it was us in that strong a position. It was clear from the start that Shaftesbury Barnet hadn't really turned up either - and the results showed that they ended up down in 4th place, behind the men from Harlow.
Ah yes, the results. They came out after midnight, and there were plenty of people still up and waiting to see them. Unfortunately they weren't quite what we wanted to see. We'd regained the match point we lost in the last event, so it was all down to 'goal difference' again... but we hadn't quite managed enough. 18 points was the margin in the end - firmly in 'if only' territory. There are so many examples of how it could have all been different if only thingummybob hadn't been stuck at work, or on holiday, or injured. It wouldn't take too many cases of runners coming a few places lower than they should have done to make up the difference, too.
1 Fairlands Valley Spartans 1864 49
2 North Herts Road Runners 1882 49
3 Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers 2672 32
4 Harlow Running Club 2933 31
5 Bishops Stortford 3602 30
6 Broxbourne Runners 4969 19
7 Herts Phoenix 4915 14
But there's no point feeling guilty, or dwelling on what might have been. We got promoted - hurrah! - and get to race in the big league again next season, against Garden City Runners, St Albans, Orion and Barnet.
And Spartans, of course.
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