Monday, February 22, 2016

Rip off Running! How much to enter a trail race?

Note the modest £5 entry fee!

And what a nice race it was too - I galloped round in 55 minutes to find that Chris Wilcox (same age group as me) was already standing at the finish with a big grin on his face. I'd been pushing like mad to finish strongly thinking he was behind me and, most likely, catching me up! Still it was good fun on a cold, wet, windy, muddy course. The friendly guys at Clwydian Range Runners have been successfully organising races round the forest for years, most of them on forest tracks and made up paths and mostly at night (The famous 'Dashes in the Dark'), now the staff at Llandegla centre have marked out a running trail to complement the excellent MTB trails. So this was the grand opening of the route. We paid our £5 fee which included soup and a roll and set off to enjoy a very well organised safe race. I must point out at this stage that the Clwydian Range Runners break even on the race and this is a non-profit making venture. Imagine my disgust on arriving back after the race to find that another group of people (not a running club) have announced a race on the same course in summer with the entry fees starting at £23 (the ad says 'no booking or hidden fees'.) Someone is clearly making a fat profit out of this and they'll no doubt target fitness centres and the like and entrap naive first timers who think they're getting a good deal. Anyway thanks to all the marshalls and timekeepers who stood out in the pouring rain - there's devotion to the sport.

Bad news for the Union of Bridgepainters .
 We took this picture of the Forth Railway bridge when we were just about to cross the Forth Road bridge on our LEJOG cycle ride. This was almost at the end of our longest day - just short of 100 miles! Could not see anyone at work painting it though! Apparently the practice of starting to paint it all over again as soon as it was finished ended fairly recently - it was reported in 2011 that 'A 200-strong team has been applying a triple layer of new glass flake epoxy paint, which is similar to that used in the offshore oil industry. It creates a chemical bond to provide a virtually impenetrable layer to protect the bridge's steel work from the weather.'

Go, go, go.

And here are a few statistics from our wee cycle ride across the UK:
Total Distance - 871.7 miles
Total time on the bike - 78hrs 22mins 12secs
Total Climbed - 49494ft (almost twice up Everest!)
Average pace - 11.1mph
Best days pace - 13.5mph (last day!)
Top Speed reached - 45.1mph (last day)
Furthest Distance in 1 day - 96.7 miles
Total Calories burned - 42267
Not bad for 2 non-cyclists I think





Thursday, February 18, 2016

Cranking up again

It's me Martin - just in case I forgot who I was!
OK I think it's time I got this blog powered up again. I guess most people have stopped checking up on me after a six month hiatus but I'll see how things go now. Much of that time was spent at the wonderful Chatterbox English School in Sardinia where I was teaching a lovely class of Year 5 children. Just as busy as schools in the UK though and little time for anything else such as a blog. So after this sabbatical I'm ready to go again and I'll chip in with bit and pieces from the missing six months as I go along. Running has been on the agenda and I did a couple of half marathons in Italy at Assemini and Cagliari (more about those later) and back in the UK in January I ran the Four Villages Half in Helsby followed by the Village Bakery Half at Wrexham (there's a theme there which I've only just noticed!) Times have been remarkably consistent with me coming in in 1.40.42, 1.35.02, 1.35.46 and 1.35.22 respectively. The latter performance earned me a North Wales gold medal in the regional champs and a packet of crumpets.

Nice red bell!
Just before Sardinia Lou and me managed to fit in LEJOG, i.e. the Land's End to John O'Groats bike ride which was a frantic twelve day dash! Because of my sudden plan to go teaching we had to fit this one in quickly - two weeks before we'd intended. I'd done most of my training on this faithful old Dawes Audax  (pictured above). However several hours on slow ups and speedy downs convinced me that my dodgy gears and brakes were not up to it. Rather than spend a few hundred quid on upgrades I thought I should spend a few hundred quid on a new bike, hence the shiny bright red Fuji Tourer you see in the photo below. The very helpful chaps at Evans Cycles fitted some nice mudguards and more robust tyres and I can tell you it was all money well spent - the disc brakes proved themselves on a couple of notable occasions and the 900 miles plus was puncture free.

Not quite so shiny now though!