The Joe Percy 10k

Joe Percy 10k is coming up 14Th June who's up for doing this race this year lets get a team entered .

RECORD BREAKING EXPLOITS SPARK SPEN SUCCESS

Kevin Ogden led Spenborough and District AC to a trio of age category victories, while grabbing a fine third place overall in the annual Esholt 5km road race series.

Ogden, Tony Bradford (8th overall) and Keith McGhie (11th) all went into the last of the three round championship leading their respective sections and each pulled further clear of their nearest rivals, with in-form Ogden climbing among the overall prize-winners with a lifetime best 16 minutes, ten seconds in the final race over the undulating Yorkshire Water owned course.

It was another fine performance from 38-year old Ogden, less than a month after clocking a superb 2 hours, 45 minutes and 16 seconds to finish 321st in the London Marathon.

Bradford too had plenty of miles in his legs - the 45-year old fencing contractor fitting in the Leeds Half Marathon in between rounds one and two at Esholt, then shaving two seconds off of Alf Woffinden’s nine-year old Vet 45 club record.

McGhie also smashed the club best, smashing Steve Moss’s previous V50 mark of 17:17, also set in 2001, by a full 10 seconds in the opening event, before lowering it again to 16:59 a week later.

Ogden plans another crack at his marathon best time, at Nottingham in September, while McGhie, ranked number one in the UK in his age group over 800m last year, will probably revert to the more accustomed surroundings of track racing from now on.

All three could feature in Spenborough’s next Northern Track and Field League Division 2 match at Trafford, Manchester on June 5th.

The Princess Mary Stadium, Cleckheaton-based team lie fourth after the opening round.

London 2010

Well I thought I had better write about the big day after the training blogs. As you know from my blogs we had been following a training program consisting of only 3 runs a week ,1 speed sesh, 1 tempo run, 1 long run, with cross training on a couple of other day's. I have normally just built up my mileage with long runs but we decided to try this out, I must say though it was hard only 3 runs I was thinking it would be easy NO. We were tired. My program time was for a marathon time of 3.45/3.50 based on my mile pace /track times. Visiting the physio regulary helped as the weeks went by we all were having little niggles (injury's) IT problems, pulling muscles, with 3 week's to go I had to give the boot camp a miss and at one point was even wondering if I was going to get round the bloody marathon but I soon put that out of my mind. Nine of us from spen ran, five of us with Meg ,Henry& Stacey watching stayed at the Holiday Inn, very nice it was too, Saturday was a hot day and Sunday was on for a hot day also but it wasn't bad - ideal really except for that shower at 8am just as Hazel was saying it had said on tv it was going to rain. My feeling's on the day!I am normally a bag of nerves ,sweating palms, loo stops, but I was calm and remember thinking come on lets get this over with because I carn't be arsed, the first 9mile was fine doing 8.5 pace I knew Meg&Henry etc would be at 9 , I had actually ran past them ,then realised it was them I just had to run back to them about 50mtrs (well fight my way) sardines or what !Off again keeping pace up feeling good, the miles seemed to be flying by but about 17 my chest was getting tight and I was struggling to get lung capacitiy and at 18 had an asthma do lucky for me I had an inhalar on me , at this point I was thinking of a DNF. again I put this out of mind thanks to the crouds, so from that point I just tried to keep going by running & walking ,though I had no watch on (screen went blank on sat night) I was able to check mile splits and was upto 18 was still on for the predicted time I wanted.got to 25m and willed myself to run come on jac its only 10mins left most , but even seeing the 400mtr mark didn't help as I just stopped and thought sod it ive had enough of this, commentator was stating that Ewan Thomas was very near me with 400 to go and everyone had to try beat him in boy did I peg it ! didn't see him or his long red socks. finishing time 4.17, dissapointing for me but I know I can do better and I will do another marathon not london for a while though I didn't have that buzz.All in all a great weekend we raised £1,750.00 for whizz kidz.

Rant of the Day

I'm not a prolific contributor but, as I mentioned in an e-mail to Chris Jones - at Spenborough it's always been a case of "If I don't get my own way, I'll spit my dummy out and take all my toys with me," which is the main reason we are short of so many good athletes now when, in 1992 when I joined, we were among the top ranked 3 clubs in Yorkshire (with Leeds City and Sheffield) in pretty much all departments.

Unfortunately egos seem to dictate that many folk who carry stop watches and encourage track athletes (and credit to the time they give up if not always to the manner they perform this task) can't bear to think that they don't know it all and that there might just be some aspects they could step back and think about and maybe tweak their approach. ie: listen and learn.

I recommended to Gareth that maybe we just ditch the rest of the website and go back to making it a Vets only thing (with room for ANY other opinions of course)...no-one else seems to update it or add anything!

The website as it remains is just a skeleton and certainly not one which would entice any outsider into coming along and joining the club.

Where's the credit we ought to be giving to Josh Cayenne or Steve McNamara (among the few class athletes we have left)... at the club presentation last year, there would have been no mention at all of them had it not been for me 'adding them into the script'?

Just my rant of the day...

See you at Esholt tonight

Keith

The missing link - part 2

I agree with Chris.

It is disappointing to see the short sightedness of the committee removing the link to the blog. For me it was a breath of fresh air for the club and encouraged people to contribute articles and information that they never would have done so otherwise.

The blog is a forum where members can express there opinions of all aspects of the club whether they be good, bad or indifferent.

It is obvious that from time to time there are going to be some negative comments made but it must be remembered that this is only one persons opinion and sometimes stimulates healthy debate.

Historically we have seen that as soon as any critisism it raised against the organisation it is never taken in a constructive manner and the individual is seen as a 'trouble causer' rather than looking at the issues raised and accepting that actually they may be valid points.

Having spent a year on the committee the organisation is well aware of the problems at the club. Unfortunately there are very few people who want to deal with them. The organisation should be more powerful than any individual member and if this is not the case then, as we have seen before, this will always cause problems.

As the committee has asked for the link to be removed lets here their side of the story.

Come on committee members, here is an open invitation to any of you who read this. Lets have some contributions from you and here what you have to say then maybe as a club we can all move forwards together rather than slip back into the dark ages.

The Missing Link?

I heard a rumour that the link to the blog has been removed from the club web site by official request. Seems a bit petty to me, since the blog has probably done more to help forge a sense of community and publicise the club than anything else over the last few years. Well, the blog will continue anyway, most hits don't come from the official site in any case, so it will make very little difference.


"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter" 
George Washington(1732-1799) First President of the USA