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Trionium Greensand Marathon 2011
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Must echo many of the comments already made. Tape a spray point were pretty effective for route markers.
Great race, good marshalls and well organised. Nice race goodies and great cooked breakfast too.
Wasn't too sure about being on the right route along the long downhill stretch heading back towards Dorking at the end too. No tape or nothing to confirm that is was the right way but was pretty sure it was! The way back certainly "looked" different to the way out but the mind and memory do play tricks on you after 13+ miles!
Will be back next year!
Thanks for great race Dr Rob, just sorry that I got a DNF due to my fall - grrrr! All fine now, just a big bruise on my head a stonking headache - dam roots! Oh well, will just make me more deterimined (and more carefull!) next year!
Thanks again!
Thanks all for the kind comments. Photos and video are now up - still working on the results: should be up by Monday lunchtime (make sure you refresh your browser window).
Excellent race, thanks Dr Rob. I was a bit gutted to miss the time cut off, but it was pretty inevitable really. It was nice to be part of the select bunch of half finishers, and I appreciate the effort you went to to give us our own special medal and memento which was a nice touch.
Having put all the training in for a marathon, I had been hatching a back up plan. So as I still felt reasonably good after the half I passed on the free breakfast and drove around to the other side of Leith Hill to do the second half of the route. I'm glad I made the effort as the views on that section were spectacular. Luckily most of the paint arrows were still clear, although I did lose the route a couple of times and had to do a bit of backtracking. Final finish time 6 hours 18, which I was pretty happy with.
Congratulations to the organisers for a great event.
The cut of was tougher than i had imagine it to be and it was hard work to get the first 10k done. I remember thinking that i was running at a much harder and faster rate than i wanted to. But got through it, with 100seconds left on the clock!
Took a tumble just before the turnaround point, for which meant my legs were aching in cramp for the next 12 miles. Got a little disorientated at the 22 mile mark where there had not been any makers for ages. i started walking back the way i came thinking i had definitely gotten lost, when i saw another runner i started following him, however he was on another marathon completely! < lucky i checked with him >.
The last 10km was pretty awesome, just wished my legs were not full of lactic acid so that i could have paced a little harder.
Well organised, and a great event.
Dr Rob and Everyone who helped organise yesterday's marathon, thank you very much for a superb event. Somehow I got panicked by the 70 min cut off time and scampered up the first 10k in 59 mins, which meant that I was done for by the halfway point and my time was considerably slower than last year. Schoolboy error ! It's only on the way back that you really realise just how steep that first climb was.
In the words of the great man, "I'll be back" and I'm looking forward to it already !
PS you have me down in the results as "Slim Lemur" it's "Sleek". Slim Lemur, I mean, how ridiculous...
Well that was fun wasn't it! Walking up the stairs in the office this morning was somewaht painful!
Well done everyone- whilst a big 'thank you' goes to Dr. Rob it's also the other runners that make this marathon fantastic!
Full race report from my point of view at running's least exciting blog: http://breadsweatandbeers.blogspot.com/2011/10/greensands-marathon.html
Thanks for the kind words. Well done to Jo for going back and doing the 'second half.' 6:18 is a creditable performance. You have a unique viewpoint and I would like to hear it.... is it fair to make a sharp and strict cut-off at 70 minutes? (it was very clear in all race publicity - but was it fair?).
Right you are 'Sleeky' - sorted!
Nice write-up Mr Bread!
Thank you very much Dr. Rob - a thoroughly good day out despite the extra 800 meters downhill (and then back up
again) courtesy of the idiot who deliberately moved tape; I'm not sure what anyone can do about this, and it will always be a problem on any course too complex to have a marshal at every junction.
I don't want to start a flame war, but I think that there have been a couple of (what I'd consider) unfairly negative comments here that I'll defend Rob on:
I have no idea why 99 people didn't start, but I can't believe they were all driving round Dorking looking for the school. The map on the website was accurate, the postcode produced unambiguous directions from Google Maps and Yahoo Maps and my satnav took me right to the gate. This isn't a huge event with road closures, multiple car parks etc. and I see no reason for the Race Director to provide road signs.
I made a foolish mistake and didn't carry enough gel, so had a 2 mile death march to the last aid station before a fistful of Haribo put me back on my feet - but that's my omission not Rob's; I'd expect an 'all you can eat buffet' at an Ultra, but not at a marathon unless specifically stated (Beach Head is hardly the norm!).
Finally, 'Yes' the entry fee is on the steep side, but I can see where the money goes (rental of the school, paying the catering staff to come in on a Sunday, food, cap and T-shirt that I will actually run in); I doubt that there are many race directors out there who are doing much better than break-even on these events, even before you factor in their time (if they wanted to make money, they'd be organising Triathlons
).
Thanks again to Dr.Rob
In my review I forgot to mention just how great the marshalls were. Although the one who, at mile 21, said to me "Bouncing along, not a care in the world" could hardly have been further from the truth. Maybe he mistook my pained grimace for a smile.
An excellent race, and I'll be back next year.
SCIENCE NOTES
Summarising Greensand 2009-2011:
The first impression, IMHO, is that the three races are pretty similar. The mean and mean times have decreased since 2009 but only by a few percent. Similarly the First and Last times.
This year the runner who finished last went badly off route on the return leg and ran 2 or 3 miles extra. If he'd run the correct distance he would probably have done about 05:35:00, so the 2011 Last time would be 05:49:59 (the time of the second-to-last runner).
The Cut was imposed in 2010 (75mins) and 2011 (70mins) to shorten the field's "tail". It doesn't seem to have had that effect in 2010 but it might have had that effect in 2011 -- if Sod's Law hadn't intervened and if all other things were equal.
'Old and Creaky' - you have my vote on all counts! This is still a hobby for me... so it's nice to get a bit of a pat on the back every now and again! It makes a loss after its charity donations, and is 'subsidised' by the other Trionium races...
ANOTHER INTERESTING FACT, DUDLEY
I noted the times of 40 runners at the halfway point and compared those times with the corresponding finishing times.
The first runner in the sample was in about 20th place at the halfway point. I recorded the times of the next 33 runners to arrive and then recorded the times of the last 6 runners at the halfway point. I didn't design this sampling pattern, it just happened that way.
Firstly, every runner that I observed had a positive split -- they took longer to run the second half of the race than the first half.
Most coaches would say that a positive split shows poor pacing and lack of control, probably in the very early stages. They train runners to go easy in the first half and harder in the second half.
The Greensand course is hilly, off-road and not mile-marked; most runners have not run the race before and cannot gauge the relative difficulty of the hills. These factors, IMHO, make accurate pacing very difficult, so we might expect a preponderance of positive splits.
In addition, we might expect that the Cut would make many people run hard in the first part of the race -- harder than they might otherwise run -- and this would tend to increase the frequency of positive splits.
Secondly, the data seem to show a correlation between finishing position and split -- In this sample group of runners, the closer the split was to zero, the better the finishing position.
BRM - I was in 37th position at half-way but faded to 51st. My "running partner" for a good part of the race was 2nd lady at the turn but faded to ( a still very creditable) 6th. We were both trying too hard, too early, hoping to finish higher than our training or experience would allow.
Hopefully, we have both learnt a lot.
Hi All,
Just thought I'd pop on to say well done to you lot, especially the nutters who did Beachy the day before.....
Guy, You were bouncing along at Coldharbour. Everyone I saw looked so fresh there. Maybe it was the sight of a Pub?
I enjoyed myself so much doing the Picnic earlier this year, the camaraderie amongst the runners, the support from the marshalls, the scenery, the challenge, etc that I wanted to give something back to the Trionium & Dr Rob so when the chance of helping to marshall at this race came up I jumped at it. I'd recommend doing some Marshalling, yes there are pangs of jealousy, far outweighed though by the lift you can give to people by clapping them, encouraging them, having a bit of banter with them. I know it's helped me in races, I hope it helped you yesterday.
Fair play to Dr Rob, another fantastic event, the smiles on peoples faces said it all. And that wasn't just the ones after they'd finished.....
I'll be back next year to run the whole way, not just from Coldharbour & back. A mere stroll over a few undulations in comparison to what you lot did......
Hi Dr Rob,
The quick answer is that as long as the time cut off is clearly advertised (which it was) then it is reasonable and fair to have.
I can understand the reasoning behind it, in that you want to limit the time you have runners out on the course for and looking at the finish times 70 minutes is obviously about right. If you are going to have some kind of cut-off the only way to do it is to be strict about it. If you enter a race with a cut off like this I think you have to respect it and I wouldn’t have dreamt of arguing. The marshal at the tower actually asked me if I was doing the half or the full, which confused me a bit as I knew I was over time. I told him I was assuming he was going to turn me around, which he confirmed, but it made me wonder if he would have let me carry on if I said I wanted to?
From a personal point of view, I knew when I signed up that the cut off would be tight for me, but was hopeful that I would be able to achieve it. I trained on the race route, and when it became obvious that my times weren’t improving and I was unlikely to make the cut off I did look around for alternative races. I would have swapped over to the Beachy Head but that was full and place swaps were closed by the time I thought about it. That was why I hatched my plan to run the second half on my own if I missed the cut. I think this made it easier to accept turning around.
I agree with one of the other posts that having this cut off makes people push hard at the start, which is maybe not ideal, I guess you really want to limit it to runners that can comfortably achieve the distance without tiring themselves out early on but I’m not sure how you can achieve this. As for the suggestion in another post that you limit it to people with a sub 5 hour marathon time, my PB for a road marathon is 4:47, but I guess you’d need a lot of other comparison times to know where to draw the line.
Looking at the download from my Garmin I think I got to the cut off at 75:04, so I might even have missed it last year as well (although if I’d known I was that close I would have pushed a bit harder up that last hill). I probably wouldn’t chose to run a race with this level of cut off again, it is not ideal to push that hard in the first section of a marathon, in future I will probably choose events where I know I can plod along at my comfortable pace. It is a shame that this excludes me from this lovely race, but that is life.
Thanks again for a brilliant race, and I agree with all the previous posts about the brilliantly enthusiastic marshals.
Rob, my impression on the day was that the field was stronger and faster than the 2010 field. The figures don't really support this impression but the "tail" figures lend it some weight -- see my remarks above about the Last Runner. If he hadn't gone off route, everyone would have finished inside 6 hours, which was your target.
I'd say that you've done what you can with the current Cut to streamline the field . If you make it even more rigorous you might cull some slow runners but, IMHO, you'll increase the pressure on others and make them finish more slowly as a result.
There were 184 finishers in 2011, and quite possibly 200+ in 2012. There's every chance that at least one person in such a number will have an accident or a bad day or a nav-error, and if that person is in the group of 5-hour finishers then s/he is quite likely to go over 6 hours.
Furthermore, there's an unacknowledged elephant in the room, namely the weather -- What will happen if the going is less than firm and dry or if race day is rainy, cold and windy? I'd guess that either of those events would add 10% to the mean finishing time. And for the purposes of this discussion it's not the average finisher's time that matters, it's the finishing time of the below-average runners. Mud, wind and rain will disproportionately delay the very group that you're trying to accelerate.
You might consider a different Cut - say 3:00:00 at the Duke of Kent School on the return leg. That's about 15 miles at 12:00 per mile versus the current requirement of 6 miles at 11:44 per mile.
I'd guess that all the 2011 finishers would have made that Cut, based on the sample of halfway times, except for the Last Runner, as it happens, who went off route before DoK and rejoined the course after DoK. Sod's Law Always Trumps Science.
How about a Cut at the Tower plus a second Cut there on the way back? Give them 75 mins to get up there at the start and 80 mins to get down at the end? So they've got to make the Tower by 4:40:00.
You'd have to provide some facilities at the second Cut plus transport to HQ. This provision might be advisable in bad weather, IMHO, whether a Cut was imposed or not.
Straggo, how do you know your position at the Turn? Were you counting the runners that you met returning? Holmes, this is extraordinary!
I'd like to know your times at the Tower, the Turn, the Tower and the Finish (4:08:55 - Respeck!), if you've got them?
If my observations at the Turn were accurate (not guaranteed), your split was 1:54/2:14. That's a "splittage" of 118%, which was about average in my sample (range was 100%-140%). Someone a little ahead of you at the Turn did 138% and someone just behind you did 130%.
A little group who came to the Turn just behind you did 1:55/2:03 (107%) or thereabouts. I stopped recording a couple of minutes after them. There must have been others that I didn't record who did 1:57/2:05 and similar.
So if you'd slowed a little bit on the outward leg you might have fallen in with a group who would have towed you home around 4:00:00. And that's the trouble with hindsight.......it's never around when you want it.
BRM, it would be interesting to know how many others (as I did) ran the 6.5 miles up to Leith Hill faster than the 6.5 miles down. My 6.5 mile splits were roughly: 56 mins, 65 mins, 82 mins, 70 mins - a positive split of over 30 mins (2:01/2:32). Whilst I was pleased to do it in 4:33, it does suggest that better pacing (maybe a minute a mile slower in the first quarter) would have led to a faster overall time.
BRM,
I was number 99. My splits were 1.56.38 and 2.01.43 (by my watch) and finished 30th overall. In a marathon I usually +ve split but normally by less than a minute.
Must have pulled about 20 places back in the 2nd half.
Thought I could do a -ve split given that most of the last 6 miles were downhill, but the uphills in the 2nd half were steeper than the uphills in the 1st half (does that make sense - the "steps" at The Nower for example!) and some just had to be walked! Just didn't have the energy to push any harder. Also took a little tumble a few hundred yards before Leith Tower on the return leg. The Lucazade Sport bottle took most of the impact!
Top event, well done Dr Rob!
Having run the 'half' this time, and seen things from a runner's point of view for the first time in one of my own races, I may revisit the time for the cut-off for next year, since it did not take into account some of the bottlenecks in the first couple of miles, and also seems to have had unintended reverse consequences.
It won't be harsher next year, and it won't go back up to 75, but 73 might be fairer (6.5 x 11 minutes per mile plus a minute for delays at bottlenecks, and an extra 30 seconds as well, 'cos my wife Sally says 72:30 is too 'finickity').
This year the turnaround was 70, and that's the way it was. However, anyone who I turned around between 70 and 73:00 this year, and you know who you are, can come come back for a free go next year.
Is there a way to find out our splits, other than by our own garmins etc? According to mine I did negative split, which is fairly normal for me as it always tackes me a while to feel confident i will finish (this was definately an issue with this course!). I was told I was 11th lady at the turn around and managed to creep up a few places by the end.
I looked at the race tracer website but it doesnt seem to work? I was number 168...
I think what is interesting about this race and people's splits is that although the last quater is probably the fastest section of the course in terms of terrain and height gain, this did not translate for many into their fastest section for time. Personally (and having run the Leith Hill half) I expected to find the last 6 miles easier than I did- at least on the long down hill section.
Therefore in terms of my pacing I ran the second half slower by about 12% however when I got to the top of Leith Hill I expected to run a near equal split due to the downhill section- my legs however had a different idea as I started to descend!! My approximate splits are below for each quarter
00:53:30 00:54:30 00:57:00 01:03:26
However, when I ran the Leith Hill half earlier this year I did 50 minutes up to the top and 45 minutes back down. I think there's a lesson here: Greensands Marathon- so hard it makes running downhill tough!
GUY
Congratulations on your finishing time.
Thanks for the data, which the Spoddimeter renders thus -
Your overall splittage (Turn-Finish / Start-Turn) was 126%.
Your middle-splittage (Turn-Tower / Tower-Turn) was 126%
Your outer-splittage (Tower-Start / Start-Tower) was 125%
Your overall-age was higher than the sample mean but not the highest (Range 100%-140%). Your splits are strikingly consistent, which suggests to my amateur eye that you ran a very strong race with (perhaps) the wrong pace strategy, as you say.
SEAN G
Congratulations on your finishing time.
Thanks for the data, which helps me to calibrate the Spoddimeter. I recorded you in my sample at 1:55:30, having guessed that the start was 11:05:00 -- should have been 11:04:00.
Your overall splittage (rounding your numbers) was 106%.
That's lower than the sample mean (118%) and a bit higher than your typical 100%, so your pacing is highly controlled and the variation on this course is caused (probably) by the gradients and the ground.
The lowest splittage in the sample (100%) was recorded by the runner who did the fastest race time in the sample -- s/he arrived at the Turn behind most of the sample and overtook many people on the way home, as you did.
The fact that the Nower steps (and all other hills) are steeper the second time round is just one of Rob's little jokes. The Picnic is his big joke.
Do you always aim for a more-or-less equal split or has it just worked out that way? If you are running to a pace plan, how do you apply it? I've done it in just one marathon (on-road and flattish), where I kept my heartrate within the range 145-155bpm. That stopped me going too fast in the first half and got me round in 4:20:0, exactly on target.
And that prompts a humble and respeckful message -- I'm commenting on everybody's times and pacing here but I only ran the back half of the race (as sweeper) and I struggled to complete that in under three hours. If I'd started at the Start like all you real runners I'd still be under a hedge on Winterfold Hill, wrapped in my space blanket, blowing my whistle and phoning Rob's "emergency" number (£2.50 per minute and, apparently, all his advisers are experiencing unusually high volumes of traffic).
KATIECOM
Congratulations on your finishing time. And don't be so modest -- you "managed to creep up" to 2nd or 3rd ladies' place, 26th overall !
You weren't in the sample group so I don't know your time at the Turn. There's no other way of knowing it AFAIK and your own watch is surely your best source. You're the only negative-split runner that I've heard from -- What were your times at the Tower and the Turn?
ROB
Have you thought about providing timing chips? Do you know what the costs are and how many races a typical chip lasts?
BREADO
Congratulations on your finishing time - 18th overall !
Thanks for the data, which the Spoddimeter renders thus -
Your overall splittage (Turn-Finish / Start-Turn) was 112%.
Your middle-splittage (Turn-Tower / Tower-Turn) was 105%
Your outer-splittage (Tower-Start / Start-Tower) was 119%
So we might guess that you ran too hard in the first half (same time for the outward half marathon here as you did for the Leith Half Marathon 6 months ago!), forced yourself through a scorching third quarter and paid for it in the last quarter.
I have a feeling that if you ran it again in a couple of weeks you'd turn in the same times for the first three quarters and you'd just try even harderer in the last......which is the attitude that keeps coaches and race-organisers in business. Respeck !
BRM,
That was my 10th marathon in 7 weeks and 19th of the year.....so far. I tend to run at a relatively conservative effort which is usually averages under 147bpm (70% HRR). However, my heart rate averaged 159 bpm on Sunday.
I'm not "racing" marathons anymore so even, steady effort/pace is my goal. Obviously, easier to achieve on a conventional 2 lap marathon (where both laps are near enough identical) rather than an out and back or big loop where the halfs can be considerably different. Normally, I do tend to get into a very steady metronomic pace that I can keep all day long.
Ran Abingdon the previous week in 3.40 with less than a minute positive split.
Interesting numbers BTW.
Katiecom,
Congratulations on your 2nd place. You overtook me in the last 5 miles or so and then waited and asked me if we were going the right way on the long downward stretch after the 2nd from last water station. Good running.
Top day again Dr.Rob, many thanks. Thats 2x Greensands now, so I think I'm ready for the Picnic
after witnessing the horror of it marshalling earlier this year.
Entry opening soon?
SEAN
So you're gradually getting the hang of this marathon-running then?
Funnily enough Abingdon is the race I was talking about above. What I hated about it was coming into the athletic stadium less than 100m from the Finish but having to run 300m round the track to get there.
The metronomic pace that you talk about is what I try for and it probably implies something like 70-75% HRR. It might be the most efficient medium/long-effort workrate. I wonder what the typical ultra runner's heartrate is.
I remember an interviewer asked Steve Jones after his 1984 Chicago marathon world record victory (2:08:16, on-road, flattish), "What did you find the hardest part of the race?" and he replied, "The concentration." I assume he meant that you can't settle down and drift away if you want to run fast - you've got to concentrate on the course, your plan and the opposition. Which probably means that you're uncomfortable at least most of the time.
BRM - according to my garmin at the 10k mark it was 59 minutes in, at the turn point 2:02
Sean - i was so glad to see you behind me at that point!
Just curious how people's times in this race correspond to their PBs?