News
The main race this weekend was "The General". This event is a 10km trail race run over two days. The Saturday is the a straight forward trail 10km race and the Sunday is a 10km obstacle course race. Elsie was running on the Saturday (see next week's blog for a write-up) and Sarah H was running on the Sunday.
In addition we also had Sarah L running the Wimbledon Common Half Marathon.
This week we had 18 Fit Clubbers running at 4 different parkrun venues. There were 14 at Winchester, Catherine and Allen at Torbay Velopark, Glenna at Whinlatter Forest and Alice at Salisbury.
There were so many highlights this week but the biggest news was the in-form Charles taking the number 1 token at Winchester with a cracking run of 18:09. It was superb front running from the start and fantastic to watch him streak off into the distance!
Here are the PBs:
Allen – (19:22) – Torbay
Jenny – (23:33) – Winchester
Rachel – (24:54) – Winchester
And we also had the following course PBs:
Alice – (24:14) – Salisbury
James – (21:04) – Winchester
Kathy – (29:01) – Winchester
Here is the consolidated parkrun club report:
Thursday 4th April Training Session - St Catherine's and Viaduct
This week was the first of the summer sessions and so we headed to Garnier Road for a mix of hills and sprints. Despite the cold and wet weather during the day there was an excellent turn out of 18 runners.
After the arm up we jogged down to the steps at the back of St Catherines. Here we did a single rep up and down the steps. There are 331 steps to take on and it was no surprise when Charles was the first to reach the top!
After heading back down and re-grouping we headed down to the viaduct. Here we did three reps of three different length intervals. The first was to about a third of the way along the viaduct with the second being the rest of the way along. We then ran the full length of the viaduct to get back to the start. This was repeated three times through.
After this was done we headed back along to Garnier Road car park where we cooled down before heading off.
Dorney Lakes 20 by Rachel Mills
As I am generally quite lazy, I thought I would take the easy option of running a planned 20 mile race for my longest run. I settled on Dorney Lake Marathon Prep, which being 4 weeks before London was perfect timing. I roped Anne in to join me, and then Anna and Charlotte also decided to run in prep for their respective marathons. I was aware it was going to be a case of running laps which I wasn’t overly thrilled about but it saved me planning a route!
The race took place on 31stMarch, which at the time of booking I had not realised was Mother’s Day, nor had I realised it was the weekend Simon was away on a stag do, nor had I realised the clocks changed!! AHHH!
So, once I had planned the logistics of childcare I didn’t have much time to think about it as I had masses of university work to concentrate on. I knew I could run 20 miles having run at Lydd a few weeks prior.
I slept terribly the night before, clocking up less than 5 hours due to worrying about oversleeping with the clocks changing. But I got up and ate my usual race day breakfast of Weetabix and a cup of tea, preparing snacks to take with me. Five minutes before leaving the children woke up and presented me with some lovely gifts before I set off with Anne.
We arrived much earlier than we had anticipated and met up with Anna and Charlotte. We all collected our race numbers, before I ate my later breakfast! I then joined a huge toilet queue and the bag drop queue as a warm up was taking place. I found the pacer I planned on following and then that is when it all started to go wrong!
My first mile was sloooow at 11.11 pace! I was worrying that it did not fit with my calculations of pace. I then decided that I was going to power on without the pacer, and it wasn’t long before I overtook the next pacer who should have been behind the one I started with. I decided to try and settle into a rhythm and do my own thing. The first three laps (I needed to do five 4 mile laps) were incredibly dull. I found that I was generally running alone which is tough when there is not anything of interest to look at. There was virtually no support either, so when I fell in step with two other runners, Chris and Lisa at mile 10 I stayed with them. At mile 11 I decided I needed a toilet stop and so planned to stop at mile 12. As I didn’t want to run alone I whizzed off so timing it perfectly to run with my new buddies when I can out of the loo!
At mile 16 I was suddenly overcome with emotion and cried, not really knowing why. I gave myself a good talking to and convinced myself not to stop. Again, this happened at mile 18 and I stopped to walk. It wasn’t long before I had someone telling me that I could do it and to keep going, so I picked up the pace again for the last 2 miles. It was around this point I noticed that that a couple of people were wearing the technical t-shirt that I had also pre-ordered. I thought I was delirious when I looked at it, as it seemed to say ‘Maraton Prep’ rather than marathon. It turns out I wasn’t, and they had printed them incorrectly!
Anyway, I have never been so pleased to see a finish line and then never cried so much! Thank you to Anna, Anne and Charlotte who all looked after me! It was my least enjoyable race to date despite the fact It was a PB of over 25 minutes, with an official time of 3:14:39. Not a race I would choose to do in a hurry, but then as I am NEVER running another marathon after London, I don’t need to worry about it!
On a positive note, it has made me realise that if I can run 20 boring miles with no support, London will be a much jollier experience. I’ll let you know in 3 weeks!!
New Year Running Challenge - Final Results!
With the challenge now complete it is time to announce the results! But before we do I will bore you with some stats.
With the challenge now complete it is time to announce the results! But before we do I will bore you with some stats.
25 runners completed the 12 week challenge. Of the 25 runners, 13 completed all of their scheduled runs and all of their long runs! 15 runners played their wildcards, meaning 10 got through the whole challenge without using one.
We completed 1485 runs in the 12 weeks, averaging 4.9 runs per person per week! One runner, Shelley, ran every one of the 84 days of the challenge! In fact, she’s run every day since the start of December!
12 runners were faster than their predicted times with Sarah H showing the largest percentage improvement when she ran 48:50 at the Eastleigh 10km, having predicted 52:59. Trish was a close second having run 26:47 at parkrun against a predicted time of 28:45. Both were amazing times!
So the final results…In the end it was all very close, and came down to the final weekend before the table was finalised. As expected the top three were all runners who had maintained 100% for the whole of the challenge and so the differences came down to the target times. With so many good performances the results came down to a matter of seconds.
I am therefore really pleased to announce that the winner, with a total score of 1499.91 out of 1500, is Rachel! Rachel’s target time was 1:55:00 for the Reading half marathon and she came in just 6 seconds shy of that at 1:55:06. Congratulations Rachel! Rachel takes home the first prize of a £40 shoe voucher for Alton Sports, a £25 voucher for Alexandra Sports and a one hour sports massage with Jemma.
Close behind in second place, with a score of 1499.20 out of 1500, is Glenna. Glenna’s target time for the Eastleigh 10km was 58:30 and she came in 28 seconds short on 58:58. Congratulations Glenna, you win a £40 shoe voucher for Alton Sports and a box of Montezuma Chocolates.
Third place was very closely contested with third and fourth separated by just 0.06 points. However third was taken by Shelley. Shelley’s target time was 26:10 for 5km. Shelley achieved this at the March Monday night track session (expertly paced by Ben), even though she actually ran 25:54, this was enough to take 3rd place. Congratulations Shelley, you also win a £40 shoe voucher for Alton Sports and a box of Montezuma Chocolates.
A special mention to Allen who was joint top going into the final parkrun of the challenge but he put in an amazing effort to improve his 5km time from 20:00 to 19:46. Unfortunately this was just enough of an improvement to take him out of the top 3. In recognition of this Allen also wins a box of Montezuma Chocolates. I’m sure Allen will share these with Catherine who twice fell whilst out doing runs for the challenge.
I would like to thank Alton Sports and Alexandra Sports for their very generous prizes. In addition I would like to thank Rachel Mills for donating the Montezuma chocolates.
Thank you to everyone who participated and for making it such a fun and competitive 12 weeks. I have loved seeing people’s results come in and seeing you all supporting each other.
I only plan on running the 12 week challenge once a year, so look out for the next one next year! However there will be more challenges coming in May and June...watch this space.
WFC parkrun Club
Winchester Fit Club Runners is set-up as a club with parkrun. If you go into your profile (there is a link to it on the parkrun results email and newsletter email) you can select your club. Change yours to Winchester Fit Club Runners and you will appear in the consolidated club report that we get each week.
WFC Runners WhatsApp Group
There is a WFC Runners WhatsApp chat group where we generally just wang on about running, races and cake. If you are not already part of this then please get in contact with Coach James or Coach Mike who will add you.
WFC Runners Strava Club
If you are a Strava user there is a Winchester Fit Club Runners club page. This can be accessed here: https://www.strava.com/clubs/WFC-Runners. Request to join and we will approve!
Booking onto sessions
Booking onto our training sessions enables the coaches to plan the session accordingly. You can book on in the following location: https://winchesterfitclub.simplybook.it/v2/
Race Calendar
The race calendar is now stored here: https://wfcrunners.blogspot.com/2019/01/race-calendar-2019-and-beyond.html
Race Kit
The full range of kit available to purchase and instructions on how to order can be found in the following link: https://wfcrunners.blogspot.com/2019/01/kit-details-and-prices.html
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