Young Athletes Training Wednesday 1 December 2010

Please note the young athletes training will go ahead this Wednesday whether it is snowing or not. Start time as usual 6.30 pm.
After training we will not have use of the Function Suite due to a meeting taking place and all young athletes should be collected from the foyer of the sports club.

Xmas night out

it has been decided this year the Harriers will just have a night out with a drink instead of going for a meal. This will be on saturday 4th Dec after the XC at Irvine. can you please let myself or Frances know at Mondays training if you intend going out and preference of venue and we will announce on thursday night where it will be and put it on the Blog.
Sorry about the short notice but time just catches up at this time of year

Russell

Cyprus International 4-Day Challenge: Day 4 - Too Hot for Santa

Race start/finish in the harbour

The final day was the earliest start yet with a 5:30 alarm call for a coach departure at 6:30 and an 8am race start at Paphos harbour for the 10k. I was pleased to see that although still with a chesty cough, this was the first morning where my resting pulse had been back in the low fifties rather than around 70 bpm as it had been for the past week, suggesting that my cold may finally have been lifting.

With the 250 starters lined up the temperature was already in the low 20’s. Although I was a safe age group winner with a 20 minute gap to the next M45, my aim was to run an honest race and try to have a better performance than the previous two days. Meanwhile Jimmy had made it to the line after eight hours of solid stretching on his injured calf and the motivation to beat the M60 ahead by just over a minute to move up to second M60. On the gun I went with the lead pack climbing up a ramp and out around the other side of the harbour. There was a lot of puffing going on and I easily moved into a top three position before the front two moved away. Once again I was passed by an ambulance! However this time I managed to accelerate past it and in the process moved past the early German leader into second place seemingly moving away from the chasing pack. Although flat in comparison to the previous two days, we were climbing steadily inland and after 3k the naturally tired quads started to ache and the breathing became heavier. The overall second placed athlete breezed past.  I held onto third until about the 6k mark at which point one of the army runners moved past, followed shortly afterwards by the leading German athlete and one final place was lost at about 7k. The legs were screaming for the final 3km but the last 2km through the now busy harbour front did at least seem to pass quickly with the help of crowds of people. I was unchallenged over the last 200m and cruised home in 35:49 in 6^th position. Overall I was satisfied with that performance and subsequent download of the Garmin showed that my pace had in fact been quite even, varying between 3:30 and 3:48 kilometres.

Finished!

Jimmy appeared sometime later, crossing the line in just over 50 minutes, not bad considering his modified running style to save the injured calf. The clock was running and his rival appeared just over a minute later. However, we had to wait 5 or 6 hours until the official results were posted in the hotel to see that he had indeed done enough and finished as second M60 overall by only 7 seconds. The official results also confirmed me as 13^th overall and first M45 some 27 minutes ahead of the next M45. My German alcohol free team had moved up gradually on each day and finished 7^th out of 22 teams. Despite the team name, the entire team enjoyed the free beer on offer to all finishers at the finish line!

All in all an extremely well organised event with complex logistics all smoothly handled. The races were tougher than I imagined, in part due to the hotter than normal temperatures. In fact as the photo shows, today it was even too hot for Santa in Paphos!

Too hot for one Santa

HARDY HARRIERS ON THE RUN

The EK 10k turned out to be a very cold experience for many Harriers this weekend with Friday nights snow still lying on the ground and tempretures refusing to get above freezing.
Harriers being what we are were not put off by this and 14 turned up to do the race with others on the course to cheer us on. First home was Martin Duthie (35.52)and an excellant 4th place, next in Alan Cullie(38.05), Making his debut after a long lay off Neil Green (38.46) followed by Eddie Reid(39.28). Another debut from one of our new members Mark Saez (40.41). David Herbertson (41.38) caused the upset of the day finishing in front of Jim Holmes (41.59).Next in and continuing a lot of steady good performances was Colin Banks (42.54) just in front of Billy Buchanan (43.04). Our only female runner of the day was Julie Beveridge (43.59) which i believe was a PB and in those conditions an excellant performance with surely a lot more to come. The next home was George Stewart (44.30) continuing his return to form (bit to go yet but getting their). David Wardrope (46.40), Richard Lawton (52.19) and bringing up the rear but well enough away from the back of the field Russell Couper (54.38).
Good to see so many out in such bad conditions and many thanks to Frances, Scot, Andy, Chas, Dawn, Mandy and Sandra out on the course cheering us on. Early reports on the GP suggest Jim Holmes is back in the lead and the Ladies remain unchanged but Julie beveridge closes the gap to the 1st three.
Next race in the GP is the West District XC next week and entries are closed. Names of those entered are on the spreadsheet of an earlier Blog.

Cyprus International 4-Day Challenge: Day 3

Day 3 - the trail half marathon. Its no coincidence that we decided to have our start line photo taken in front of one of the race ambulances! This is the day where the overall race series can be won and lost. After yesterday's punishing hill race, the sky was even clearer and the sun hotter by the time the race buses had taken us 1000 feet up into the mountains some 30km from race HQ in Paphos. The point of taking us 1000 feet up into the Akams Nature reserve was of course to enable the first 10km of the half marathon to be a further 1000 foot climb on sandy, rocky trails. Then the course switched to a rough skim of concrete descending 2000 feet over 7km before a tortuous 4km flat rocky trail to the finish on the beach.

On the start line I knew I had an 11:47 lead in my class that I could easily lose over the half marathon distance if things went even slightly badly. On the gun I did not go with the pack of 8 or 9 young guns but settled on my own a few metres back. Big mistake as one of the course ambulances immediately passed me to tail the lead pack and I was stuck in a cloud of dust for the next km. Thankfully a tight up-hill hairpin bend gave me the chance to pass the ambulance and I stuck to the middle of the road from there on to keep him behind. The legs were still powerless on the climb as was the case yesterday and the sun was even hotter so this was a steady uphill slog at what felt like snail pace (and leaving my now characteristic snail trail of snot). A few army guys ran past me here (easily recognisable as every limb had a tattoo - now I know what is meant by the Edinburgh Military Tattoo) but no sign of any M45's so when I reached the top of the climb at 10k in around 46 minutes I was reasonably confident that I could improve on the downhill. It didn't really though. I had the ambulance behind me for company all the way down the series of hairpin bends over the 7k descent. Although I managed to pick up the pace to around 6 minute miles, I still lost a few more places and could not stride out as the hills were just too steep. I was however glad of my decision not to wear racing shoes and instead had my regular trainers on which provided some cushioning (and a big blister on my instep) on the pounding descent. However when the course levelled out with 4k to go the legs said no and I more or less jogged over the rocky coastal trail towards the finish. The finish line was visible from about 2k out but worse you had to run past the finish for 500m and then double back on a soft sandy path to the line which I crossed in 1:31:14 in 13th position (the overall winner was finished in around 1:19). Then a litre of water was quickly swallowed and into the sea to cool the legs off (actually the sea was warm so not as effective as a Scottish beach but I am definitely not complaining). Half the British Army also seemed to be in the sea and the other half were relieving the Mr Wippy Rambo ice cream van of its supply of cones.

Jimmy was not lucky. He came to the race having not run for two weeks with a calf injury. Somehow he had got through the first two races without aggravating it but after only 4k today the calf  locked up again. He shuffled on to the top of the climb at which point the M60 who had been ahead of him in the series caught and passed him. This provided enough adrenalin to hide the pain and Jimmy was able to modify his stride on the descent to save the calf and to pass and beat the other M60 by a couple of minutes, finishing in 2:01. It is however unlikely that Jimmy will be able to run tomorrow.

Subsequent inspection of the results surprisingly showed that I had extended my M45 lead to over 20 minutes. With only the Paphos 10k Road Race (very flat :-)) tomorrow, this is quite a strong, no pressure situation to be in.

 Final report tomorrow.
Alan

Cyprus International 4-Day Challenge: Day 2

Day 2 was an early start to get bussed a few miles up the coast to the nature reserve where the hill race started by the sea. At 8:30 in the morning the sun was already burning a hole in us but we still had an hour to wait for the race start.

At 9:30 the field of 220 were set off along the coast on a flat rocky jeep trail for 800m before turning inland for the start of the 11km, 2000 foot climb. My head was spinning today with the strain of the previous day's race on my blocked sinuses and although I was comfortable on the flat as soon as I turned onto the hill the legs were instant jelly. At that point I knew any hope of trying to race today was gone and it was just a case of not doing any damage to myself. Easier said than done as the legs burned with the constant climb and the relentless heat.

Even with sun glasses, the light and heat reflecting off the white sand stone rocky trail was intense. Having initially settled down in around 12th position, I lost a few more places in the first half before a heavy breathing French athlete caught and trailed me from about 6k to 9k. At 9k the road levelled for 500m and I was able to revert to my usual long stride and pull away, passing another two in the process. The final kilometre was through the narrow streets of the mountain village of Pano Arodes and seemed like the steepest climb of all.

The cheering crowd were a welcome sight in the village square, one short lap of which brought me to the finish in a time of 57:04. As expected, I had dropped back to 12th in the overall competition (and 12th on the day). However, the age classifications had been corrected over-night and I now find myself as first M45 with an 11:47 lead over the second M45. More in his element today, Jimmy Stewart finished in 1:21:32 and maintained 3rd in the M60 classification. My new team (which I have now found out is called Erdinger Alkoholfrei) is languishing in 10th place. The team consists of a German surveyor, a British Army dentist and me and perhaps could do with some alkohol to improve performance.

A post race leg massage will hopefully have repaired me enough for tomorrow's trail race half marathon with another 1000 foot of climbing.

Alan

Cyprus International 4-Day Challenge: Day 1

I believe it may be a little snowy back home so here is some sunshine to warm you all up! So here I am in another hot place lining up for day 1 of the four race Cyprus International Challenge. After a few days of acclimatisation in 25 degrees sunshine, it was time for former Harrier and extreme event veteran Jimmy Stewart and I to take our places in the beach front queue outside the 5 star Coral Beach Hotel for the start of event 1, the 6km individual time trial. Anyone with any sense would have stayed on the loungers by the pools but as the hotel is the regular pre-Olympic warm weather base for the British Olympic Team, various Olympic plaques and top-notch sports facilities provided enough inspiration to get out and run. Truth be told, if we had hung about on the loungers too long, there was a risk of being press-ganged by the large squad of French Foreign Legion soldiers enjoying a few days R&R at the hotel on their way back from a 6-month tour of duty in Afghanistan.

It’s the first time I have queued up rather than lined up for the start of a race, this being a time trial where each runner was set off at 10 second intervals in race number order.  With me at number 44 and Jimmy at 168, it was likely that I would be finished before Jimmy had even started. Injury-free for a change, I was however loaded with the heaviest cold for years, which started the day before Brampton. Being a runner, common sense has no part to play in the decision process and so when my number came up, all thoughts of just getting through this first race easily soon disappeared and off I set in pursuit of the 43 runners ahead of me.


The race started from the beach, skirted around the hotel and emerged through the hotel main gate onto the main road. Within that first 500m I  had already caught and passed 4 or 5 runners and narrowly avoided being mown down by a local motorist in the hotel car park! However, once out the gate I could finally release the large snot build up in my nose (no spitting or such like allowed within the carefully manicured hotel grounds) and take off on the flat road to the finish 6km up the coast. The long line of runners stretched out in front provided plenty of targets to aim for and soon we were half way in the midst of a banana plantation. A glance at the watch showed 3k in around 10:15; too fast with three more days of racing to come and so on with the brakes. The slightest hint of a climb brought us to km number 5 and then the crowd was in sight on the cliffs ahead. Through the finish line in 21:08, a bottle of water downed and then a seat in the shade of a truck. Some time later Jimmy crossed the line in 29:41 and very relaxed.

Later on at the evening pasta party the results were revealed. After day-1 I am 7^th overall, 1:10 down on the leader and 3^rd vet, the first 4 vets being quite close. Jimmy is 3^rd M60. Tomorrow is a 11km hill race, starting at sea level and finishing at 2000 feet. I have also managed to get myself poached and am now a member of a German team sponsored by one of the large German breweries! More news tomorrow.

Alan