WFC Runners: WFC Runners - Adventure racing and PBs galore!

News

We only had one runner racing this weekend and that was Emma Swift at the Muscle Acre obstacle race near Guildford. This was a 12km obstacle extravaganza that took Emma just over 2 hours to complete, proving just how hard it must've been. Congratulations Emma.

This week also saw an amazing Fit Club family turnout at Winchester parkrun with 16 registered WFC Runners plus a number of others all joining Olivia and I for a 5km run around the park. It was great to see so many there and the team photo at the start was lovely (sorry to those who we didn't catch for it). It was also great to see so many of you in Fit Club kit...it was certainly a sight on the way round the course!

We also had Glenna running at Kingston parkrun in London, celebrating her son's 250th parkrun. Congratulations Dan!!

Last, but not least, we had Jake running at Bournemouth parkrun.

As ever there were a number of stellar performances. We had PBs from Allen (19:38), Tom (21:19), Rachel (25:40), Simon E (26:54) and Sharon "One R" (27:29). Not bad considering most of those weren't really "up for it"! Mike H (20:45) also ran his fastest time of the year.

Congratulations to everyone and special thanks to Anna for supporting us whilst injured and to Sarah for taking the photos!! I have put a section of the photos at the bottom of the blog.

Here is a link to the consolidated parkrun report for this weekend: http://www.parkrun.com/results/consolidatedclub/?clubNum=26888&eventdate=2018-07-14

If you don't see your name on this list (Simon E) then please think about amending your running club on your parkrun profile to "Winchester Fit Club Runners". You can access your profile via your weekly results email or parkrun newsletter.

Thursday's running session saw the Runners take on a football based interval session at The Garrison Ground. Read all about it here: http://wfcrunners.blogspot.com/2018/07/wfc-runners-thursday-12th-july-world.html
Questars Adventure Race - Wiltshire Downs by Anna Hastie

It was two years ago when Mike first broached the topic of us doing an adventure race together. Mike was already a keen runner and cyclist at this point, whilst I hadn’t ever done any running, and with the exception of ‘biking the bridge’ in San Francisco in 2012, the last time I had been on a bike was to do my cycling proficiency at primary school (and this is the only bike at this time I owned)! However, the idea of trying to find checkpoints and hearing it included kayaking (I love being in the water!) I agreed to the challenge.

A Questars adventure race consists of running, cycling and kayaking combined with orienteering to find checkpoints. You can choose how long you spend on each discipline and have to plan your own route to get to as many points as you can in the allotted time, being careful not to be late back as points will be deducted.

Last weekend (7^th July) we headed out to the Wiltshire Downs to take part in our third adventure race, which was a different experience to the last two we have done. Having taken up running a year ago we thought it would be a good opportunity to attack the running element this year (the previous two years our focus was on the bike; in 2016 we did two short 2.5k runs, and in 2017 we did no running – mainly because we got so lost that we didn’t have time!).

So back to this year….we arrived at the event base, dropped off our bikes and other gear in the transition area, and headed inside to collect our race pack. The race pack consisted of a map, an electronic tag for tapping in at checkpoints, and a wrist band. We had about 30minutes until briefing so used this time to try and plan our routes we would take, trying to note the many contours on the map. We had a start time of between 10 and 10:35 and a kayak slot of 11:50 – 13:00 (you can use as much or as little of your kayak slot as you like but can’t start early and are penalised severely for being back even 1 second late!). We decided to go for the run first and start at 10, hoping to be back to use our full kayak slot, leaving us 2 hours for the bike after.

The briefing ended and we headed straight to the start. After we swiped our tag, our 5 hours began and at this point we got handed another piece of paper which tells you which checkpoints are dummies (this time there were 11!), how many points each is worth, and how to find them when you reach the correct point on the map. We sat down quickly, crossing off the dummies on the map, did a quick bit of re-planning for our run and set off.

The run went pretty smoothly, despite the heat, difficult terrain and the steep, long hills. We were feeling pretty good at this point having managed to pick up every checkpoint we had planned to and making it back to the kayak start point 8 minutes early giving us time to pop to the toilet, refill our water bottles and throw water over ourselves before getting kitted up with our life jacket and jumping in the kayak!

Like I mentioned earlier, I love watersports and so as always was looking forward to my once a year outing on the kayak! J So we went for it and were feeling great when we got out the kayak, having used 64 of our 70 minutes slot to collect every point available to us in the water! So by now we had clocked up 200 points on the run and 160 points on the kayak and were thinking surely we can get a PB …. However….this is where things went a little wrong!

We headed to the transition point, got our map out to re-plan our bike route and then headed off. We got to the first point with relative ease, as this could be accessed mainly by road and a nice surfaced track. Then things got much tougher, having to ride up very steep inclines on extremely trying terrain, including ridiculously bumpy ground across fields, very narrow overgrown paths where your bike wheel is down a channel and your pedals knock the ground so can’t even go round and getting stung and cut by everything, needless to say… I was struggling!

Out of breath somehow we made it to the second but when reaching the location of the third frustratingly we couldn’t find the checkpoint to tag in and had to admit defeat and decided to head back to base the way we came, missing out on two further checkpoints we had hoped to collect on our way back. I wasn’t my happiest heading back having collected so few points on the bike, having fallen off three times, and needing to get off my bike even on some downhill as nearly went over my handlebars it was so steep!

We made it back 10 minutes early so avoided any deductions and despite our poor performance on the bike we managed to complete the event with 420 points which placed us 10^th out of 22 in our category (mixed novice).

Ultimately I would really recommend giving a Questars adventure race a go! Yes it can be frustrating when you can’t find a checkpoint or are so lost you have no idea where you are on the map or how to even get back to base and you’re completely exhausted having been exercising for 5 hours … but the sense of achievement and adventure is definitely worth it!

To sum up the best things about this type of adventure race:

- They really are accessible to all, regardless of how fast you are, or how long you have been running/cycling.

- The way that everyone disperses of in different directions at different start times means that you really are running your own race, unaware of how well anyone else is doing. There is no worrying about being last!

- It is so friendly – when you pass other teams going opposite directions everyone says hi, and often you join forces with another team to try and find a checkpoint which is proving elusive!

- The kayaking! Just something a bit different which most of us never get a chance to do!It’s not necessarily the fittest and fastest who win (yes that does help!), but the planning as well as having routes scuppered by dummy checkpoints all play their part!

- The sense of achievement of quite how many miles you have covered!

- And of course I have to mention the guilt free massive cake you get to enjoy at the end!

Questars run a series of events a year, the next one is on the 1^st September in the South Downs and we are considering signing up! Maybe see some of you there…?!

http s://www.questars.co.uk/

Winchester Half Marathon - Volunteers needed!

Some of you may have seen the post by Lynn on the WhatsApp group about the Winchester Half Marathon needing volunteers for this year's race. The race is on Sunday 23rd September and needs over 300 volunteers to be successful.

By volunteering you get free entry into next year's race.

If you are interested please follow this link: http://winchesterhalf.co.uk/get-involved/win-city-marshal/

Race Calendar

Here is an updated race calendar. If you have any others that you wish to add, please let me know!