Moraghan Training - Stevie G

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Comments

  • DeanR7DeanR7 ✭✭✭
    run britain, a waste of space, and even worse than wava :)
  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭
    Aley - just "a few times" running sub 15 5ks - you should be ashamed ;-)
  • DachsDachs ✭✭✭
    For a bit of fun, which threadster is listed highest in http://www.runbritainrankings.com/rankings/ladderlist.aspx

    Samir Haddad, surely?

    Well, if we are including anyone who has posted here, it is clearly Jonny D.

  • Reg WandReg Wand ✭✭✭
    ML84 said:
    I used to look on there but it's nonsense. You've Matthew Hynes in 400+ position and a clubmates of mine who hasn't broke 32 for 10k in the 200s. 

    Positive news on your foot Reg. have you actually had a diagnosis? 
    Nope, only the diagnosis was the one I gave it, Sesamoiditis, or possibly could have been another stress fracture. It wasn't gout and unless it's arthritis or some other non injury condition I have no clue.
  • Reg WandReg Wand ✭✭✭
    I'm not even the top ranked v40 in my postcode, I am in exactly 10,000th place though.
  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭
    That's a nice round number Reg - is that overall or men? I may need to let myself slip down the rankings a wee bit to take it from you :wink: (highlights how crap the ladder is!). I'm very pleased to say I am no. 1 V45 in my postcode though! Legs feel shocking today! More like V75 I think. Not just heavy, but actual pain creeping in in places. May need to reassess running home...
  • DachsDachs ✭✭✭

    I think the National Ladder is flawed, but still a reasonable indicator.  They've always said it rewards regular racing, so if someone is injured, their handicap drops off a bit quicker than it probably ought to.

    But I would say that, wouldn't I?

  • Postcode M50 #1 for me, UK Overall 15268 and UK Men 14162 which is odd so only about 1,000 women ahead of me and the guy who is 1,000 on the overall ladder has run a 73 minute HM and the equivalent lady has run a 85 minute half.

    Got the call up for the 12 stage relays tomorrow, definitely bottom of the barrel job, but I am happy to do so. 25 years ago my eldest was born and the same day I ran the Midlands 12 stage relays.
  • Simon Coombes 2Simon Coombes 2 ✭✭✭
    edited March 2017

    RB Ladder - I like to try and get top 20 in the V40 category - not checked lately, but with all the newbies flooding in the last few months I've probably slipped down a bit.

    Not much been going on here -was off work Weds - did 6/7 200 reps then off to London to do the Shard & Lunch (red letter type thing - xmas present from the in laws). Got the train back just after 3 so missed all the problems in Westminster. Just a run back from the kids school yesterday (3 miles) and short commute run today, as relays tomorrow. Just SG and Dachs going? (can't remember whether Dachs was or not). Edit..PMJ is in too..hopefully will catch you to say hi.

    Missus is doing the Watford parkrun, so i'm not there for the start - on leg 7/9 apparently, long leg of 3 laps. Good luck to Dean & ML84 up country..

  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    Ruck me, the relays are tomorrow!
    I remember when our cap first mentioned it, and i don't think i actually ever said yes, but sort of went along with it, thinking it was ages away, and erm, now is tomorrow.
    Squad has been changed around like Phil says, so i've changed from 5th leg to 7th, meaning a handover from Phil for a nice thread exchange! I actually thought he'd be in line for a straight swap and be the anchor man!
    Just hope there's no more drama from the lineup now
    .
  • Reg WandReg Wand ✭✭✭
    That's overall Bus.

    I think it rewards frequent racing more than regular.

    Looking at my races from 2016 I actually PB'd in 100% of the races I tried to, I am pleased with that. Clearly Run Britain doesn't think that's very worthy.

    3.5 miles this morning, felt like hard work but that's how I always feel running in the morning. Baby steps.

    Good luck at the relays.
  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭

    Sounds like a fair bit of racing going on tomorrow then - good luck all!


  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    It'll soon ramp up Reg. It's quite hard to remember to appreciate things when you do get back to full capacity

    I expect i'll appreciate that tomorrow at 2.20 or so! Just need to remember how good the 5miler felt in Oct/Nov and this is a whole mile less. 
  • I'm on a short leg now, leg 10. That's fine by me and we seem to have a decent team out, should make top 15 hopefully. First stop Cassiobury park for parkrun. 

    Good luck all. 
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2017

    Bit of a quiet thread day, so let me change that with a monster write up of today's relay!

    Southern 12 stage road relay, conveniently a mile from an aunt's house, making for a family get together/stress drive in silence with the olds taking them there, a cheeky little 75mile drive one way. Only behind my Portsmouth and Gosport road trips of yesteryear for distance.

    Our team lineup was picked early doors. Our team lineup was then tweaked midweek, and our bid to be In the top 25, which the cap judged as nip and tuck wasn't helped by one of our top boys pulling out very late.

    6am wake up, 8.30 set off, 11.30 meet up, grabbing food here and there, and still 2+ hours before i'd even be up on leg 7, a "Long leg" of 4miles.

    The course was a dangerous one for those of us keen starters. A long gradual down smashing you into things. This soon turned into a strange set of twists and turns, with one sharp climb into what sod's law had decided was a great place for heavy wind. It evened out a bit, still with wind, then another climb (into heavier wind), before eventually leading to the turn back to do the same again.

    Our current form top boy, a 16.17 5k recently mustered, set us off on leg 1 and it was slightly alarming how far back he was In the 50+ strong opening leg.

    The pace was ferocious, yet tactical, and the wind you could see was sapping people from lap to lap. Anyone reporting similar lap times must be a don.

    I think we came in somewhere like 28-30th, with top guy down already.

    The mission was to time everything perfectly, making darn sure you knew the earliest possible time you could be off, and be in position to not ruck the whole team up. You knew it'd be one of these events where you do the flimsiest of warmups, but it'll be enough!

    The short legs seemed to zip by, and the long legs took ages, which disturbed me with mine to come :)

    However, with the big man Phil being my handover, that relaxed me a bit.  We eventually, after much banter all round, came round to his 6th leg, and after seeing him through 1 lap, I knew I had 7-8mins to get everything sorted! 1/2mile jog, strides, 2-3 unleashes and get into pen.

    Phil set me up perfectly, with 1guy about 10metres ahead, and a barrage of ladies. With a ridiculous start, i'd taken about 5-6 in the first 100metres, and was trying to ignore my watch saying 4.20 pace.

    "RELAX" on this first bit the captain barked. Gotcha. I hadn't. I continued, and then had my first run into the wind. That'll be tough on lap 2 and 3 I thought.

    So it proved, and in classic parkrun style I'd done a monster first mile, a reduced 2nd, an even slower part, and then finished faster.

    Overtook a few more (I think a couple of blokes I was competing against, but we'll check the breakdown later), and a gaggle of other women, including our Sam. A couple of guys with the big teams came past, from a leg ahead of us, and thus on the shorter legs! Much faster, and doing less distance...not gonna compete with that!

    With the encouragement of the gang, managed to get up what felt like Everest by then, through what felt like a hurricane, and sprint (dribble)  over the line for our 8th guy.

    Had one of the loveliest lie downs of all time, and wasn't quite sure whether i'd stopped my watch exactly, but it seemed to show as

    4.08miles in 22:42

    The splits make ridiculous readings...

    5.05 (! - Raced a mile in 5.00 a few weeks back!)
    5.32
    5.47
    5.41
    35secs....may have been a few added while I remembered to stop my watch.


    Two of our top guys were in the 21:xxs, but I think 3 of us will be exceptionally close. One youngster definitely did 22:40, and I think big Rob suggested 22:37 for himself, so let's see how close to those my confirmed time comes out.

    A nice fun measurement, but clearly things change on the legs. Rob had a comedy battle with one guy of a club called Jaffa"(!), literally neck and neck for 3.5miles of the 4, before beating him. Whereas myself and the youngster had sections of no man's land. Impossible to measure how the wind was too. I swear it was a little lighter after leg 1, for a spell,  but then picked up later!


    But the big story, is somehow, we QUALIFIED, and maybe even as high as 20th!

    So we're off to the nationals, which in honesty I hadn't even thought twice about.


    Met up with Simon, who looked a real sleek pro in his gear, and Curly, ahem less sleek in a bobblehat, with her clubmates trying to deal with the biggest flag In the history of this event.

    A good day of bonding with the new crew, and THIS could be our thread big meet up after all. Hopefully Lit, Dean, Curly, Simon will be in. Matt too? Anyone else?
    As well as some of the "Overdone it thread" lot.

    Just need to negotiate a shorter leg at this one, as that's just over 5k. That sounds an ideal distance :)

  • Well thanks SG, I never try to look like a sleek pro if I can help it!!

    So I had been given leg 10 in the end. We had expected top 10 as we had a pretty strong team out and we were pretty spot on by the end. My leg 9 man had got us on the back of the Woodford green runner handing over to me, managed to pull away from their leg 10 runner at the start. Felt good on the first lap, although the wind had sapped me a little bit I went through in 6.50. As expected the 2nd lap was more of a struggle, but mnanaged to come in just under 14 I think. Leg was ok I think so that's good. We ended up 8th. 

    Nice to to have a chin wag with SG and see PMJ in full flow too! Comedy rucksack run to the pub with 10 assorted Herne Hill and Kent AC, bemusing many locals. All good. 
  • alehousealehouse ✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    Well done team SG, and SC, on your qualification for the national. Whole new ball game isn't it!

    I am going to try and get to the nationals given that my own club won the northerns yesterday...by 8 seconds after over 4 hours of running. Shame I couldn't go but was involved in a uni past v present race, following which I had an interesting conversation about the nationals: one guy was telling me that his proudest moment in athletics was bringing his team home in first place at Sutton Park. He said that he had had a similar chat with another guy from his club as this was his proudest moment also when 20 years or so earlier he had passed a couple of runners to bring their club home first. He ranked that performance as more satisfying than his sub 2:10 marathon or any of his international vests!

    I reckon you will be down for a long leg, SG!

    I noticed Matt's team qualified also and he picked up a couple of places on a short leg.

    And our B team qualified also! 
    Progress is rarely a straight line. There are always bumps in the road, but you can make the choice to keep looking ahead.
  • ML84ML84 ✭✭✭
    Great report SG. Looks like you held it together well despite the quick first mile. You need to do a long leg at the nationals. You'll love it! :wink:
    I think the nationals are in 2 weeks aren't they which is 6 days after the marathon but I'd still like to go. 

    Well run SC. I like the sound of HH and Kent AC. They seem to put just as much effort into post race beers as they do for the racing which is just how it should be! 

    Sunny Stanley park in Blackpool was the venue for the northern 12 stage, which on the first day of the year where it was perhaps shorts and tee shirt weather and with there being no football on, you can imagine just how busy the park was. Packed to the rafters with chavs. ;-) 

    I got there early so I could watch it all and found you could nip across parts of the course to catch various bits which was pretty handy. It was way too busy with people though and with the race going round a boating lake with an ice cream shop, a boat hire place, a train ride and hundreds of people it got very silly at times. 
    The bloke on the train parked it outside the ice cream shop which left about a 2m wide gap between his carriages and the lake. Throw in masses of families and our B team runner had to come to a complete stop at one point to walk through the pedestrians before starting to run again. When asked to move the standard response was "it's a public park int' it!"
    Pretty comical watching Olympian Tom Lancashire tearing through that sort of scenario.

    I was on leg 8 and went off in 10th and hoping to close the gap on our local rivals Blackburn who with Ben Fish in their team had opened a gap on us. Luckily for me I had another 2 lads to chase down which I managed to do. Always helps when you've got someone to chase. Into the last stretch before we hit the track and I can hear a few shouts of "Move!". It turned out a group of chavs were walking side by side down the main drag with runners going both ways. Lots of swearing from them and a clubmate after they refused to move to the side as his trainers we £100. Haha. I shouted to calm down dickhead as I went past wide but funny looking back on it. Really was comical and makes the national relays look like a military operation. 

    Pretty happy with my run on a very twisty course with an uphill first mile and some undulations. I ran 16.39 for 3.2 miles which was the 5th fastest time on my leg. In and around some decent names looking at short leg times and we ended up finishing 9th overall so a very good day. 
  • The BusThe Bus ✭✭✭
    Made me laugh that Matt, but I'd have been fuming if I'd been there :-)

    Good work all round and glad the leg held up Simon (or sleek pro as you'll be known now!)

    Top marks to SG and Philip though for getting there team into the Nationals!!! What a first mile SG!

    Right, all the Mother's day chores done for now - MSR to follow, before getting back to them!

  • I'll try and cover some areas that SG didn't. The call for the 12 stage relays went out mid-Feb with a call for sub 18 minute 5k runners. I was a bit sceptical but, to be fair, with a week or so to go that was achieved, even with things such as Ben M-D being injured and he was factored in from the start. Rob Foster, to his credit, insisted on having a list of travelling reserves so rather than commit to leave home before 9 on a Saturday and get back after 6 just to run 2.7 miles, you had to do so with no guarantee of a run.

    I put my name down and was happy when another guy with similar ability seemed much keener so he was reserve #1 1 and me #2. Happy, get the brownie points for showing commitment but not have to commit. 

    Then they started dying like flies. At one point we had 3 of the 12 out and the other reserve. A little arm twisting and 2 of the main pack were brought back from the dead but not Chris B who was on a long leg so the order needed juggling. I was "definitely in" and Rob found another reserve.

    Relays are always great events. Team of 12 plus hangers-on and you have one running, one warming up and one throwing up which leaves plenty left over to shout on encouragement and generally socialise with other runners. The venue was great for this as it was a long, thin lap with a dog-leg and the tents were in the middle, so you saw them as they ran down just after the start, at the top of the dog-leg, then as they ran up again towards the end of the lap. 

    Onto the race. One lap recce early doors and it was obvious that there were fast bits (downhill with tailwind) and others into a gale up a hill so the tactic was easy on the fast and hard on the slow. A quick, late warm up when the leg ahead had started but with walking round it wasn't needed other than to kick-start the heart. James came flying down, clean handover and off. I immediately had a half dozen athletes ahead of me, and started to close on them. Didn't know if they were on my leg or not. I saw a girl ahead who I passed at Reading so started to close her down and then at the end of the first lap Rob shouted there was an old guy in all green who I needed to pass. I spent the second lap hunting him down. It was probably 100m he had at the start and I passed over to Ian with about 10 remaining.

    I was leg 6, so into the meat of the race. Our first runner came home 31st and for the first few legs it was easy to count places as all were on the same leg and we had not been lapped, but then the lapping started and then you started to get a mix of three and more legs out at the same time. Each of our runners seemed to overtake one or two and the aim was top 25 so we started to try and get an accurate picture. Last leg was a short leg with letter T on the vest, so count the Ts and try and remember who they were to avoid double counting. We were standing on the half lap point and got to 15 as our last leg runner started. How many T's were out there over the first half lap? 16, 17, 18 and then we saw him. Can't believe it, we seemed to not only be top 25 but somewhere close to top 20. Frantic short-cut to the finish to cheer him home and then as he crossed the line he was passed a letter inviting us to the national finals. Such instant gratification! We started to count letters beign passed out and it seemd to be 4 or 5 so that confirms our gut feeling. 

    Still no results up on the internet, seems to be the way of these things. Results are printed and posted on a window in almost real time but to upload onto the internet, impossible. 
  • Reg WandReg Wand ✭✭✭
    Nice relaying all. Sounds like a lot of fun and if I ever get back running I'd like to do some of that.

    Just watching the world XC in Uganda, nice that it's in a place like that but these courses are so dull. They seem to be just fields broken up by tape with a few man made mounds. No mud, no hills and a bunch of mercenaries running for Turkey. Seems like a shame.

    My foot isn't happy that I ran a couple of times so I think it's back to the drawing board and off to see a specialist as soon as I can sort the BUPA paperwork nightmare.
  • Pondered over the regional relays on my long run this morning. Seems to be an odd set-up. There are three regions, south, midlands and north.

    The south covers a vast area from Cornwall to Norfolk but if I look at the results of the first leg I see one Oxford team but nobody west of there. Where were all the big clubs, you have to assume that someone like Bournemouth AC would put in a team (last year they had 9 athletes sub-80 over the half and 12 sub-36 over 10k). 

     

    Just doesn't seem to encourage participation. 
  • Great relay reports. Yes SG you'd love a long leg at Sutton Park ( a big mwahahahahah from those who have done one before!). Great result for DD 's to get to the national. Matt, sounded a bit chaotic but amusing in Blackpool..and yes HHH and Kent AC do tend to be the most social drinking wise in London, there's been quite a few late nights and idiotic photos over the last few years. 

    Nice map PMJ. It may be an option to move Cornwall, Devon and Somerset into the midlands purely for ease of travel, thinking up the M5. Agree about the results. Ridiculous. 
  • I see the Sutton Park relay courses have changed a bit, seems to be since last year. Did anyone do them last year? The old route left you right at the bottom of the hill with all the club tents on it so you had the last bit as a hard pull uphill with everyone able to see you. Seems to cut back sooner now and cuts out some of that last long drag.
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭

    I don't know what a hangover is like, but feel like I'm on a non drinking equivalent. Yesterday was a long day just with driving and family bits, let alone the hours of pacing around, and the actual running!

    Moz would have had a recovery short run after yesterday, but going too short on a Sunday after a 4mile race didn't seem right, so settled on an 8.5miler for a 56mile week.


    It'd take a huge effort for those SW teams to get to the bottom right hand of the map! Lucky it was Gravesend and not right down in the SW like a Folkestone or something :)


    The Midlands looked a huge event, 72 teams starting was it? And they and the North got their results out pretty quickly. While we still await it in the south.

  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭
    ps although I hadn't really given much attention to the date of the finals, it luckily fits in decently. If it'd been next Saturday, the Hyde Park 5k wouldn't have seemed clever to continue with, and luckily it doesn't come the same weekend as any United trips (3 in April!)
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭

    PPS, the regions look so different with their setups too.

    The Midlands seemed to have 70+ teams starting, and only 4 long legs, run straight off. Whereas we in the south had 53, and a Long-Short repeat x6.

    Shame the final doesn't follow the midlands approach!

    6x5.4miles, and 6x3.2miles is going to require one long shift!

    For ease of maths, call that 30x6 and 18x6, and that's almost 5hours worth!

  • Stevie G said:

    For ease of maths, call that 30x6 and 18x6, and that's almost 5hours worth!

    https://www.race-results.co.uk/results/2016/nat1216.pdf

    Fastest team last year  4:16:30. Slowest short leg 16:19 from a 15:30 5k guy.
  • alehousealehouse ✭✭✭
    I was going to post the same link! Worth noting SC, Philpub and Matt's times last year!
    Progress is rarely a straight line. There are always bumps in the road, but you can make the choice to keep looking ahead.
  • PMJ - we haven't gone right to the bottom of the hill for a couple of years now. When you are coming down the long drag, we don't turn left at the edge of the lake, just carry on up that little bugger of a rise and along so you come out halfway up the hill. 

    The reason the long leg is such a bastard is because of the loop at the start. The masters relays just go straight up the hill and the difference at the top of the hill is tangible. 
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