First West Yorks League XC 2010/11

A little late, but as they say, better late than never.

10 Oct saw a return to Nunroyd Park at Guisley for the first WY XC league race of the season.
Always guaranteed to be muddy here in some places. It didn't disappoint, but was probably the best underfoot it has been in years and as it happened it was a very warm afternoon.

Personally I am bored with this venue since I have run here so many times - its a shame that the races aren't move around to other locations a bit more.

Main talking point of the day was the absence of the new Spen tent. Spend a grand on a tent and then nobody can be bothered to bring it. (senior men have volunteered to return it if somebody else brings it). Not surprised really.

However, back to the running. Carl Foulstone in his first outing in the Senior men's race led the team home in a very respectable 42nd place. Followed home by Ryan Dransfield in 58th suffering a little from freshers fever after his first week at uni. Gerrard Skipping turned in a creditable performance in 70th (those white spikes will never look the same again - Gerrard).
Old campaigner Jeff Hornby (start slow - get slower!) did his best to miss the start but not quite as he worked his way through to 91st.
New boy (relatively speaking ) David Middleton had a strong run to finish 101st on his cross country debut for Spen.
These were supported by Michael Dransfield 142nd (injury free - almost, but not for long), Alan Greenwood 147th (where were the hills!), Ian Ogden 148th (frightened his bro off) and last but not least Edward Wilkinson 159th (where was the tarmac?)
All in all a great turn out with 9 finishers and an 11th team placing overall.
Lets have the same commitment next week at Huddersfield when I know 1 or 2 will be missing.
Other main talking point of the day was 'where were the ladies?'
Only Emma and Amanda turned out.
Come on girls lets have more of an effort from you. No point turning up for a low key race mid week in the middle of summer. This is where the real action is!!

Yorkshire vets race

Hi all, its getting time for the vets race from the club (14th nov) and I am on the prowl for marshals again or any help marking out the course , so if your reading this and not running or otherwise busy please can you spare an hour.
Also club presentation night is fri 26th nov usual place etc if you have a trophy it needs to be handed in asap please for the next person.
Jackie.

Book Review - Born To Run (Christopher McDougall)

I bought this book after catching an interview with the author on Radio 4 (I am an intellectual, honest guv') and was curious enough to purchase a copy for my holiday reading.

The book tells the story of a frequently injured runner (the author) who discovers through research that less is more if you don't want to get injured. Not less miles as you might think, but less cushioning in your shoes. The research leads him to the ultra-running (100+ mile off-road) scene, and some of the colourful characters within, but more specifically it leads him to the greatest ultra-runners of all, the Tarahumara tribe who hide away in the Copper Canyons in Mexico. The Tarahumara seem at first to be a tribe of super-humans, capable of running distances that seem impossible, but the book presents scientific research (in a friendly manner) which explains that running is something we were all born to do. In fact humans are the greatest running animals on the planet.

All you need to do is throw away your expensive Nike shoes and go barefoot (or almost). It was an interesting read from cover to cover, even if the author did come across as a bit pompous in my opinion.

A recommended read! 

Yorkshire six stage road relay championship and West Yorks XC league

This event takes place on 11 Sep at Leeds Met Uni (note change of venue) 2pm start for men.
Anyone wanting to take part let me know asap.

Tony Bradford will be required.

I hope we will be able to turn out a team again in the West Yorks XC league. I am taking the entries for the Senior men. Lets make a big effort and try and do as well as we did last year.

Web Site

Just to let everyone know, Stuart Hall has taken over the official web site. I know that most vets/fell/road organising goes on through here but we should still keep the site updated if we can. The formation of the site has encouraged a small number of new members down to the club so its all to be encouraged.

Since this blog is 'blogata non grata' with the committee, then please email Stuart direct with any interesting news or races that might be of interest to anyone who considers this blog 'not in the interests of the club!'.

Gareth
(former web master :( )

He can be emailed on webmaster@spenac.co.uk

Cycling is bad for your health!

Hi everyone, hope you are all fit and well!

Just when I thought I was getting into half decent shape again, I spoiled it all by having my worst ever crash on the bike. For the gruesome details and pictures, check out my cycling blog...

http://gonecycling.blogspot.com/2010/07/hospitalised.html

http://gonecycling.blogspot.com/2010/07/injury-update.html

Keep up with the blogs!

The Helen Windsor 10k

Wednesday 7th July

A breezy night in Stainland saw the turnout of 8 Senior members of Spenborough for the Helen Windsor 10k.

An impressive 200 local runners lined up, also having to juggle between the cycle race flying round at what seemed 40mph.

Kevin "the race machine" Ogden flying the flag for Spenborough at what seemed 41mph finished in a very respectable 3rd place (35 mins) having to compete with a host of top runners that turned up, including the likes of Pierson, Crowther and Whitworth!

Gerrad Skippins was second home in an excellent 14th postition in 38 mins 56 secs. Gerrad is going from strength to strength right now. Keep it up!

Oliver Carter 49th back, third home in 44.20, but refused all samples of a drugs test after this impressive time and knocking 6 1/2 mins from last year. Keep off the ale.

Vet 60 Graham Walsh in 60th place was next for Spen in 45.44.

Mick Howard 69th in 46.26.

Emma Maguire - first female vet 40 back in a smashing time of 47.33 coming home in 77th.

Jackie Carter 50.59, nearly 3 mins slower than last year in 109th, followed by Liz Bottomley in 54.27 which she is she is slight dissapointed with but has had back problems, or so she says ;)

Taking in to account this isn't a PB course and it was a little breezy we can all knock 4 mins off our times.

The Reindeer Romp

Tonight six of us ran in this race, This is an off road multi terrain course from the Reindeer Inn nr Wakefield, I have done this for a few years now and it never gets any easier, this year we have a slightly altered course ,for those of you who know the old course we now take a right at the end of the lane at the start omitting the down hill section .

I like this route better I think. it takes in some woods but we still have the hill at the end.
First back for spen in second place (again) Kevin Ogden, you're gonna have to sort that Kevin, Antony Bradford followed by Gerard Skippins (first time for him ) then Michael Howard, followed by myself and Elizabeth Bottomly (first time for Liz too) both have enjoyed it and are waiting for next months race the end of July.
Both Liz and I did a tough boot camp last night and don't know how we managed to race tonight.
Maybe we will give BC a miss for the next one to see if it makes any difference.
Thanks you guys for turning out hope you all enjoyed it , and the free chip butties afterwards.

Joe Percy 10k results

You need windows 2007 to be able to view these results. It won't let me copy and paste them into this :-( and I can't work out how to put an attachment into this blog! So here's spen results typed in manually:-

2nd place - Kev - 34.24
8th place - Tony Bradford - 36.17
21st place - Tony Bradford again! could this be Gerard? 37.33?
27th place - Dan Stuart - 38.36
102nd place - Richard Lee - 43.58
117th place - Mick Howard - 45.21
143rd place - Graham Walsh - 47.06
149th place - Emma Maguire - 47.29
156th place - Alan Whittaker - 48.04
184th place - Donna Winterbottom - 50.14
193rd place - Jackie Carter - 51.22
210th place - Hazel Pike - 53.12
215th place - Elizabeth Bottomley - 53.26
218th place - Suzanne Plimley - 53.46
257th place - Amanda Pearson - 61.27

269 ran the race in total

John Lunn - Leeds City

Just heard the sad news that John passed away in his sleep on Monday night.

John was a well known character in West Yorks athletic circles and a good friend to many people down at Spen.

John was passionate about his beloved Leeds City A.C. and would be seen at many events 'encouraging' the Leeds runners to perform to their maximum.

What a lot of people may not know is that John was an extremely talented athlete in his earlier years and his performances would have won many a race in more recent times.

John's enthusiasm for the sport never waned and recently was still trying to capture many of the Leeds City age group field event records.

I know he will be missed by many many people throughout athletics.

spen athleats at the lamm

Just a few lines to let people know that we do have some competing members left, be it that there sport is slightly different to track,and less appealing to some committee members.

In total 5 spen runners set off on Friday 11th June to compete in the low alpine mountain Marathon taking place at lock fynne in Scotland this is the connoisseurs event and very popular.

Steve Hemingway had to find a partner at the last minute, and he was lucky to get one off the lamm web site he completed the score class with very good results Mark& Josh completed the score with some trepidations as this was there first attempt at this type of event there second day went better than the first with some hard lessons learnt from there first day.(they are now looking forward to the Saunders in July as are we all) I my self had one very good event coming second vets team with Tim Sowood who partnered me last year.From an email from Chris King

who did the B class (witch is some what harder than the D class we did) he had a very good event and came 58th witch is very good as we only bagged to Munro's (hills over 3000 ft for those of you who might think its a walk in the park) and the b class did more than two. Sorry for the lack of detail but to do a write up of the hole event i would have to go see Kieth and get him to do the write up.

Well done Jackie Carter

Many thanks to Jackie for rising to the challenge and getting 15 runners out for the Joe Percy 10k.
I know a lot of time and effort went in to making this happen.

The Joe Percy 10k

What a fantastic turn out at the Joe Percy tonight Fifteen seniors made the effort and I would like to thank everyone for turning out for me,
The weather was kind to us ,Dry with a little wind .
Kevin race machine Ogden had a brill run just being piped to second by 6 seconds young Ben from Halifax harriers was first, another good run for Anthony Bradford chasing in in 8Th position.
Our first lady in was Emma M Gui re who had a good run closely followed in by Donna Winterbottom, both managed fab times on very little training,
A big well done to Hazel and Elizabeth because the three of us had very sore legs from boot camps strength training , it felt like I was trying to run through treacle at times, I would also like to thank Ian Ogden who just turned up to watch but got the job of writing our positions down as we finished, so thanks Ian,
Team photo & results will be on soon .

And then there were two

Unfortunately for the past few weeks there has only been myself and Gerrard turning up regularly for the track training on Thu nights with an occasional visit from others.

For these sessions to have maximum effect it requires as many people as possible to attend. Besides the training benefits it is a chance for athletes to meet, socialise have a laugh and organise racing etc.

I know its difficult for some people to get there made even more difficult by mid week races and track training isn't for everyone, but I believe it is an essential part of increasing speed and endurance for road racing.

As I see it there is little point committing myself to keep attending every Thursday and organise training sessions if nobody else is interested.

Please let me know your thoughts and if anybody wants to do anything different on a Thursday I am open to suggestions.

This is probably just a knock on effect of the gradual drop in the number of adult runners at Spen that have declined over the last few years. Shame that the club has done nothing to address this problem even though the committee has been made well aware of the situation.

Can't blame anybody in particular as there is little appetite from either officials or athletes to tackle this issue.

A sad day for myself really as starting as a young boy at Spen in the early 70's a with no real senior men's squad to speak of and seeing that team build from the likes of Richard Lee, Alan Whittaker and many others to become a force to be reckoned with in the north of England throughout the 80's and early 90's to arrive back where I started from is a difficult pill to swallow.

Thinking back now we haven't had a senior middle distance coach since my dad gave up in the late 80's. (Yep that 20 years!) maybe this is a reason too.

Spen over the years has prided itself as a club that 'caters for all' which may have been true at one time but unfortunately isn't anymore.

A lot of the issues have occurred due to lack of volunteers and a lot of the roles being carried out by a very small number of people.

Unfortunately, wether they like it or not, it becomes the responsiblity of the committee to find those helpers (or replacements) - however difficult.

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