Dulwich Midsummer Relays 2017

52 teams of three took part in the Dulwich Runners Midsummer Relays on July 12th 2017, held for the second year in Dulwich Park. In previous years the club organised a midsummer 5k - I ran it in 2015 (see report here) - but with the park hosting a 5k parkrun every Saturday it makes sense to try something a bit different.

The start of the first leg

 This year I ran with people from work who I sometimes join for a Wednesday lunchtime run around the Tower Bridge area. We fielded two teams as 'Tooley Street Runners', each of us taking our turn at one lap of the park - just over a mile.

Tooley Street Runners

Finsbury Flyers were the winning men's trio in 14:52, and a team from London City Athletic Club won the women's competiion in 17:43. The mixed team prize was won by three Peckham parkrunners in 16:34. Full results here.

Bewl15 2017: 15 very hot miles

Last weekend - Sunday 2 July 2017 - I  took part in a 15 mile race on the Kent/Sussex borders. My clubmates who had run it before told me that the Bewl15 was a great race, and they weren't wrong....

Everybody said it was well organised, and Wadhurst Runners did a great job, seemingly supported by signficant parts of the local community. Plenty of car parking and good facilities at the Uplands Sports Centre, sufficient toilets, water stations throughout and lucozade at two points on the course.

Everybody said it was a friendly and fun event - and yes, there was a piper to lead people to the start, free beer and cake at the end - not to mention a brass band  and a technical t-shirt and medal. The race was started by Olympic legend Dame Kelly Holmes too. She let everybody start and then joined in, swiftly moving through the field - she passed me at about mile three.

Kelly Holmes and piper

Everybody said it was an amazing course -  and yes we warmed up in a field with sheep bahing across the way, always good for us townies. After a start downhill along a country lane the course made its way around Bewl Water, the largest inland water in the South East of England (its actually a reservoir created by the flooding of a valley in the 1970s). The course, at least for the first ten miles, alternated between sections of shaded woodland and trails  on the shores of the reservoir, where boats sailed in the sunshine. There were horses.

Photo by Mark Reese of Hastings Runners - @the_real_reesey

All very good but I must admit by the end I was reminded of that 1980s anti-drugs advert -  'when they told me how good Bewl15 would make me feel they didn't tell me how bad it would make me feel'.

Entirely my own fault of course.  I headed off close to the front at a cracking pace that I knew I couldn't sustain, but I wanted to avoid a bottleneck in the first mile where the field has to file through a narrow gate - and where last year people further back had had to stop and walk. The heat was tough - I didn't put sun protection on and really should have, as I ended up with sunburnt neck and shoulders. I found myself slowing and then, at about ten miles in, the hills reared up. There are three significant ascents in the last 5 miles, including running back up the hill you run down at the start, all the way up to the finish line.

In the last couple of miles I got full on cramps in my quads, and while I was determined not to walk, I did have to stop a couple of times as first one leg then the other stopped working.  I finished in  2:25:34 behind 458 others - many of whom streamed past me in the last third of the race. There were 835 finishers in total.



The finish line



Bottom line is I failed to respect the distance, not for the first time. I only entered a few days before and had to google whether it was 15k or 15 miles - believe me it's the latter. I figured I still had the fitness from my London Marathon training but that was two months ago and though I'd run plenty since I hadn't done any long runs at any kind of pace.

Congratulations to Danny Kendall (Cambridge Harriers) who won the men's competition in 1:27:37, and to Tina Oldershaw (Paddock Wood AC), first woman in 1:44:46. Tina is a W50, so can't really blame my woeful run on my age category! Some great runs from my Kent AC clubmates, including medals for Che Compton (5th place overall and first male vet) and Zuzana Nemeckova (2nd female vet).

So yes, I strongly  recommend Bewl15 but do some training - and wear sunscreen!

Hard earned medal and t-shirt

Southern Road Relays 2016

This year's Southern Road Relays Championships took place last Sunday (25 September). Shifting from the traditional Aldershot venue, they were held at Bedford Autodrome near Thurleigh in Beds, probably as far north as you can go before you're in the Midlands region (the Midland Area Road Relays were held the same weekend at Sutton Park).

After six junior races, there were two main events - the Senior and Veterans women's competitions run together with four legs of 4500m; and the Senior and Veterans men's races starting together but with the Seniors being a six stage relay and the Vets a four stage affair,  each with 6000m legs.

start of women's race

Bedford Autodrome occupies part of the site of RAF Thurleigh, built in 1940 for RAF Bomber Command and also used by the US Eighth Air Force in the Second World War. After the war it became an aircraft research site, Royal Aircraft Establishment  Bedford, which closed in 1994. Today Bedford Autodrome, established by former Formula One driver Jonathan Palmer, is mainly used for Motorsports though it has previously hosted Duathlon events.

Jess Judd (Chelmsford) leads the first leg in the women's race

There were some justifiable gripes about facilities - portaloos were a long way from the start- and it wasn't great for spectators, with runners heading off into the distance to return twenty minutes or so later. But nobody can complain that it wasn't a suitably challenging course. The long, flat motor circuit on the wide, open expanse of an airfield was exposed to a wind which was tough to run into for the first half of the single lap course. As the field became very spread out after the first leg, it felt quite bleak and lonely out there sometimes with nobody around to judge yourself against. 

The Pits signs signalling the last few hundred metres 

Aldershot, Farnham & District AC won both the men's and women's senior champs, with their Andy Vernon and Emily Hosker Thornhill running the fastest legs on the day for men and women,

My club, Kent AC, did well. Men's A and B teams both qualified for national champs, finishing in 11th and 23rd place, the women's team  came in 9th place, the  M40 men won the vets champs, and the M60s won silver in category.

It was my first road relay, obviously my fear running the second leg was that I would be overtaken by waves of people but that didn't happen - I lost a couple of places, but overall was in pretty much the median position in age category (19th fastest time out of 36 in M50 - 24.09). In an event of this standard, I was happy enough to be Mr Average for Age.

Kent AC M40 team with vets trophy

Full results at South of England Athletic Association

rally handover point - Amy Clements (Kent AC) heads off

Adrian Lowther's excellent short film about Kent AC's day - in which I feature briefly:

Video of men's race from Tonbridge AC's Mark Hookway (more from other races here):

London Marathon: a short report of a long race

Walking slowly downstairs today after yesterday's London Marathon, my first marathon. It was a milestone for me as it was two years ago this weekend that I dipped my toe into organised running for the first time since leaving school by taking part in my first parkrun, at Hilly Fields, after several months getting going with the NHS Couch to 5k podcasts. Since that time I've run 80+ parkruns, joined a club (the mighty Kent AC), completed a cross country season and run a couple of half marathons and lots of other races, so I feel as if running London completes my apprenticeship. I achieved my goal of breaking four hours (3:51), a respectable time I think considering I'm still shaking off a cough/cold - well anyway that's my excuse for slowing down in second half.

Yes, just like they say, the atmosphere at London is amazing with a record 37,675 finishers and hundreds of thousands on the streets cheering us on. I loved the music on the way round - 'A Town Called Malice' at Blue Start, the old guy singing 'Lady Madonna' outside Clancy's in Woolwich, numerous drummers, bagpipes in Rotherhithe, and DJs playing everything from Springsteen's 'Born to Run' to CeCe Peniston's 'Finally' (except it was at the half way point not the end). Personal favourite was hearing a few bars of the similarly named soulful house classic Finally by Kings of Tomorrow, a track I last heard out dancing to Norman Jay at Notting Hill Carnival ('time marches on never ending, time keeps its own time') . A similarly packed crowd yesterday but  I wasn't hanging around to dance and sing along - as I've said before, for me running is the new raving.

I wasn't spending too long sight seeing either, though I like the fact that as well as passing all the chocolate box London tourist landmarks (Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, the Cutty Sark in Greenwich) the race takes the world's best long distance runners on a tour of South East London, out through Charlton, Woolwich, Deptford and Rotherhithe .

One of the advantages of being a London runner is how familiar much of the course is. I was able to leave home after 8 am and get to the start in plenty of time, and in my Marathon training I've covered various sections of the route, including the first seven miles the previous weekend with a group of Kent AC runners. The club turned out 46 runners yesterday, with outstanding performances from John Gilbert, 2nd finisher after the elite field in 2:18 (I saw him running past me in the opposite direction in East London with nobody in sight behind him), and Amy Clements, 10th non-elite woman in 2:43 (full results here)

The finisher t-shirt and the medal for this 35th anniversary race both featured the image of Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen jointly winning the first race in 1981 (I saw them both speaking last week at the London Marathon Expo)

As expected the last few miles were the toughest, by that point it was head down and keep going with all the noise becoming more oppressive than inspiring, by that point too I was close to vomiting on lucozade and energy gels. Having done the training I had my mantra 'I do this everyday, I do this daily everyday, I do this' courtesy of Crystal Fighters, as well as my regular mind trick when suffering of telling myself that 'the faster you run, the sooner you can stop'. And the sooner I stopped the sooner I could have a pint after a couple of weeks of fitness fanatic abstinence.

Although I had a ballot place and therefore no charity fundraising target I did invite donations to Core (gut and liver disease charity)  in memory of my dad who died from stomach cancer. I'm amazed that I've raised more than £800, thank again everybody for your support - there's still time for a last minute donation at Just Giving!

sitting down on the Mall just after the finish
 - standing up again was the hard part

See also some other bloggers' perspectives:

Running Past - A View from Mile 8

Lissy Runs - I Ran the London Marathon
Hels Bels - Mind Over Matter
Life Laura London
Tiny Runner

Update: Tim from Kent AC paused briefly at mile 20 to propose marriage to Linda - before going on to complete a sub-3 hour marathon

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