Go Feet: December 2015

Tuesday, 29 December 2015

Running on Screen (10): Stick Man's Christmas Running Adventure

I've done plenty of running over Christmas, including parkruns at Hilly Fields on Christmas Day and at Peckham Rye on Boxing Day (incidentally there's a good article in today's Independent about parkrun, which features Hilly Fields and mentions my friend, chief cheerleader and Kent AC runner John Barron. See How parkrun became a global phenomenon: The free activity that has changed millions of people's lives by Genevieve Roberts).

Obviously there's more to Christmas than running - there's eating, drinking and watching TV to do too! Not too much athletics on TV at the moment, but there was one excellent running programme on British TV. I refer of course to the film version of Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler's children's book, Stick Man.

Truly a cautionary tale for runners everywhere, it starts:

'Stick Man lives in the family tree

With his Stick Lady Love and their stick children three.

One day he wakes early and goes for a jog

Stick man, oh stick man, beware of the dog'

You see Stick Man and family are sentient beings just like you and I, but out in the world they get mistaken for mere lengths of wood. Stick Man suffers the indignity of a dog playing with him, a swan building her nest with him, being thrown into the river as a pooh stick and put on a fire. Worse still the narrator seems to think he is just jogging, when actually it was a threshold run. Will he ever make it back to the family tree? Thankfully (SPOILER ALERT) Santa comes to the rescue. But he could have saved his family a lot of grief if he'd taken his mobile phone with him when he left for a run.

Previously in the Running on Screen series:

Run Lola Run and running Berlin

Walford Half Marathon (Eastenders)

Race Strategy in The (US) Office
Top of the Lake and The Fall
The Running Man (1987)
Muybridge's Runner, 1887

The Casual Vacancy

From Darkness

London Spy

Tuesday, 22 December 2015

Winter Solstice 2015: running in with the sun

In London the sun rose at 8:04 am this morning on the Winter Solstice, marking the turning point in the year when the days start getting longer. I marked this seasonal festival with a run at a stone circle in Hilly Fields, a South East London park I have run round hundreds of times during Hilly Fields parkrun and training sessions.

The monument, made up of 12 boulders, a central flatstone, and two standing stones forming a gate outside the circle, is not as ancient as it looks. In fact it was built in 2000, with the grantite boulders being transported to the site from Mount Struie in the Caledonian Mountains, and the other stones being quarried at Weydale, Caithness at the north east tip of Scotland.

But the relationship between stone, soil, grass, tree and sky is as real there as at any ancient megalithic monument, and people have been gathering there to mark the seasons since it opened. This morning there were a couple of drummers welcoming the sun and a handful of other sunrise watchers. I did a clockwise circuit of the park (about 3k), starting and finishing in the middle of the circle, and coming back in via the stone pillar gate which faces east towards the sunrise. If I was running in with the sun it didn't actually show its face on this cloudy morning, though the sky did brighten shortly afterwards.

It was noted that the gps map of my run generated the shape of a mushroom [insert dubious theory about Hilly Fields as cult centre of fly agaric chomping shamans!]

See previously:

2013 Christmas Run at Hilly Fields

Hilly Fields parkrun and history

Monday, 21 December 2015

South of the Thames Cross Country Championships 2015: 7.5 miles at Somerhill

The 2015 South of the Thames Cross Country Championships took place on Saturday 19th December, hosted by Tonbridge Athletic Club in the grounds of the schools at Somerhill, outside of the town.

242 runners completed the tough 7.5 mile course, with the men's and women's races taking place together. The men's winner was Kent A.C.'s John Gilbert in 42:29. For much of the race he was neck and neck with Tonbridge's Max Nicholls, the 19-year-old Team GB junior mountain runner, but Gilbert pulled away on the last lap and Brighton and Hove's Stephen Ferroni squeezed past Nicholls on one of the final hills to take the silver ahead of Nicholls in third place.

Amy Clements (Kent AC) won the women's gold in 50:40, twenty seconds ahead of Nicole Taylor (Tonbridge AC), with Sammi Amend (Belgrave Harriers) in third. In the veterans categories Kent AC's Chris Greenwood and Cath Stibbs won the M40 and W40 medals, Tunbridge Wells Harriers' Alex Howey and Dulwich Runners' Clare Elms won the M50 and W50, with the M60 and W60 won by Michael Thompson (Tunbridge Wells Harriers) and Maggie Statham (Holland Sports AC) respectively.

In the men's team competition the big prize - in every sense of the word - was the Dewar Championship Shield for the six-to-score (i.e. team with the lowest combined points for their first six finishers wins, with one point for winner, 2 points for second place etc). Kent AC won by a six point margin from Tonbridge, with Belgrave Harriers in third. In the 12-to-score competition, positions were reversed with Tonbridge AC first, Kent AC second, and Brighton and Hove AC third.

Kent AC's winning men's team - Neil Phillips (8th place), Chris Greenwood (4th), John Gilbert (1st), Ken Pike (manager/coach), Owen Hind (9th)m Ben Harding (18th) James Connor (12th).

Detail from the Dewar Challenge Shield, presented to the South of Thames Cross Country Association by whisky magnate and MP Thomas Dewar (1864-1930). Note the image of runners heading towards a gate.

The women's race was won by Dulwich Harriers, with Kent AC in second place and Belgrave Harriers in third position.

Kent AC women scorers with their silver medals: Cath Stibbs (7th place), Amy Clements (1st) , Kate Williams (26th), Sarah Young (31st), Victoria Buck (20th), Teresa Murphy (14th).

The course

The map and the territory

The course, which had been very well laid out by Tonbridge AC, was essentially set on one side of a large hill in the grounds of Somerhill House. Built in the 17th century, the building and its estate have a rich history including a period as a World War Two prisoner of war camp and a link to the wonderful stained glass windows by Marc Chagall in the neighbouring village of Tudeley. Since the 1990s Somerhill has been the home to several independent schools.

Somerhill was painted by JMW Turner in 1811, and the hill shown in the painting was the one we ran up, down and across at the weekend, with three significant ascents on each of the three laps. The ground was soft, and fairly muddy/slippery in places. A few tumbled and most were fairly drained by the end - I know I was, coming down with a cold I considered getting round without stopping an achievement in itself.

I bet Turner didn't run up that hill nine times in an hour

Film of the race from Tonbridge Athletic Club

History

Kent AC (my club) have been doing really well in cross country in recent years, winning the men's Surrey League and men's and women's races at last month's South of the Thames Team Race (a shorter race previously known as the South of Thames Junior race). But the club have not won the South of Thames Championship since 1907, when the team came first in the race held at Bromley. J. Keywood won the race for Kent AC that day, followed by R.H. Backshall (Eastbourne) and J.S. Satch (Kent AC) in third place.

Kent AC's Albert Aldridge, one of the country's top distance runners of the period, won the South of the Thames in 1902, though on that occasion the club finished second to Brighton and County Harriers. The location again was Bromley - 'Mr A C Norman's park' - which as today's Norman Park Recreation Ground hosts Bromley parkrun and the running track used by Blackheath and Bromley Harriers.

Thursday, 17 December 2015

Regents Park 10k (Royal Parks Winter Series)

700 runners completed the Regents Park 10k on Sunday 13 December, part of the Royal Parks Winter Series arranged by The Race Organiser. That included eight of us from Hilly Fields parkrun/Kent AC chasing PBs before entering a season of goodwill and gluttony.

Tinsel town in the rain - the finish at Regents Park

Spanish runner Miguel Aristu was the first man home in 34:24, with Lucy Wertheim winning the women's race in 39:34. The course is generally flat (some mild slopes notwithstanding) and all on tarmac, so ideal conditions for a good time. It was cold and drizzly on Sunday, which for me is another incentive to run a bit faster.

The course has one unique feature - it passes along the edge of London Zoo, and some of the animals are visible from outside. So if you are searching for some shamanic power animal inspiration for your running look no further! Actually the most exciting animal I could see was a camel - two humps just about visible behind me in picture below. The two hump bactrian camel is not as fast as the one hump dromedary used in camel racing - and whose name is actually derived from the Greek word for running - but it has its hydration strategy sorted!

My time of 41:52 was one of my fastest, though not a PB it was enough to lift me in the Run Britain rankings to the hallowed ranks of Number One in my age and postcode category - 'He was the fastest M50 in SE14' is something I will happily have on my tombstone!

Full results here

Thursday, 10 December 2015

Kent Vets Cross Country 2015 at Sparrows Den

The Kent Veterans Cross Country Championships took place last Saturday (5 December 2015) at Sparrows Den, West Wickham. The Kent County Athletics Association event was hosted by Blackheath & Bromley Harriers, who are based locally.

There were three races - men's 40 to 49, men's 50 to 59 (both run over about 6 miles) and a third, shorter race that combined the women's competition and the men's 60+champs. In total there were 313 finishers from clubs across the Kent and South London area.

start of men's 60+/women's 35+ race

Results

My club, Kent AC, won the men's V40-49 headed by Chris Greenwood who finished first by a 90+ second margin - he has won the British Masters V40 XC three years in a row, so no great surprizes there. Tunbridge Wells Harriers were in second place, followed by Medway & Maidstone AC.

The men's 50-59 race was won by Ben Reynolds (Tonbridge AC), whose club also won the team competition, ahead of Blackheath & Bromley Harriers and Tunbridge Wells Harriers. With 'three to score' (i.e. results of first 3 for each club determining team score), and only three Kent AC finishers the team were dependent on me as third scorer - not a great omen - and we came in at a respectable fifth (out of 13).

The men's 60-69 race was won by Jeremy Carnell (Cambridge Harriers), with Blackheath & Bromley Harriers winning the team competition ahead of Cambrige Harriers and Kent AC.

Vernon Thomas (Greenwich Tritons) was first home of the eight 70+ runners, including the only 80+ runner, Richard Pitcairn-Knowles (Sevenoaks AC), who incidentally I also came across running recently at Hilly Fields parkrun

The women's race overall was won by Clare Elms (Dulwich Runners), with Kent AC the winning club in the 35-44s. Runners up were Dulwich Runners with Blackheath and Bromley Harriers in third place.

Petts Wood Runners won the women's 45-54 ahead of Folkestone Running Club (2nd) and Kent AC (3rd), though the first finisher was Maria Heslop of Paddock Wood AC who unfortunately for them did not have the required three runners to feature in team results.

Barbara Wenman, Canterbury Harriers, won gold in the women's 55-64 and Anne Unseld (Bromley Veterans AC) in the women's 65+.

(full results here)

Winning Kent AC men's team (35-44) - Chris Greenwood, Phil Sanders, Stuart Beaney, Che Compton

Winning Kent AC women's team (35-44) - Cath Stibbs, Theresa Murphy, Victoria Buck

The course

The first part of the course was a charge into strong winds and a lap of an open field - not my favourite terrain - before heading into the woods, with a couple of fairly short uphill sections and a nice technical descent (i.e. watch your feet or fall over, or in some cases watch your feet and still fall over). Much of the woodland section is along narrow paths with limited room to pass, so runners need to pick their moments to overtake - the flat section along Woodland Way giving one such opportunity. There were only a couple of patches of serious mud, and many of the runners managed fine with trail shoes rather than spikes.

The pub

Afterwards we retired to The Swan in West Wickham for post-race refreshments and to compare medals. While some left in a worse state than they came in, I don't believe anybody did as badly as a hapless Blackheath Harrier returning from cross country here in 1896 and falling off the train at Lewisham!

Chelmsford Chronicle, 25 December 1896

Thursday, 3 December 2015

Songs About Running (5): Jogging for Jesus

You know when you are out running and some one heckles you, and of course you don't lose a step, but you spend the next couple of miles thinking about the really smart reply you should have come out with?

Last week I had my first religious heckle, with some guy shouting out that I should look to save my soul rather than my body, and that I should stop jogging. Obviously that was plain rude, I run not jog, mate!

I wasn't going to hang around to debate the fine points of theology, but first I had an anti-religious wave of anger. I could have taken him down straight away with some thoughts on 'the problem of evil' - you know, if God is all-powerful how come He allows terrible things to happen like war, famine and pumped up guys shouting at passers by.

But then as I calmed down, I thought 'hold on, surely you can take care of your body AND your soul?'. If you're of a religious persuasion, shouldn't you make the best use of the legs and lungs that the Good Lord gave you? And in fact, some of the greatest runners have been righteous believers, I mean haven't you even seen Chariots of Fire?

And then I realized something else, that while he had included me in his line of fire and brimstone as I ran past him, his rant had first been directed at a woman running towards him. So really it was the old old story of some shouty bloke hiding behind religion to tell women what to do with their bodies.

By the time I'd worked all this out, the miles had ticked by, it would have been much quicker if I'd simply retorted - you need to get Jogging for Jesus!

Jogging for Jesus is a fine slice of gospel funk by Leslie Harris and the House of Fire from 1980, a time when at the height of the 'jogging boom' in the USA there were many running-related songs. But unlike, say, the similarly themed The Jogger by Bobby Bare from the same period, this is actually a great piece of uplifting music.