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BA Athletics Club News Digest 15th August 2022
Events marked "#" are points scoring for the club's participation trophy - for the 2022 title. Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps] For future weeks: inclusions, with photos, please to Roderick Hoffman at news@barunner.org.uk. This Week's EventsPlease help me by sending in your results, for instance by filling in the tables below and forwarding to News@barunner.org.uk. Some events will have "Prompts" set up in Facebook. These allow the posting of a single image and some text and make it easy to flip through everyone's entries. Weekly Athletic Achievement (by late Sunday) or use the Facebook group prompt:
August Monthly Mile ResultsFive of us recorded one mile times over the last month. Joe and Michael Ball returned after long gaps, the rest of us ran slightly faster than last month, despite the weather. Ian and Mike run at the weekly Arethusa Mile in Bushy Park
Roderick Hoffman The Big Half 2022 - help neededOn Sunday September 4th we will support the London Marathon organisation in the first of three events in four weeks. On that day we will marshal a crossing point for The Big Half, a half marathon finishing in Greenwich. I've had a good response from volunteers, but we could do with one or two more. If you are free that morning, please could you let me know? Thank you Track & Field - We’re in the men’s final!! – Can you run or vault??Our ultimate Track & Field event of the season takes place this Wednesday. The Men's team have qualified for the Rosenheim Final at Kingston. This is always an exciting evening of action. We still have several events uncovered, and it would be good to put out a full team to challenge the likes of Walton and Woking. I'm particularly looking for volunteers to cover 400m, 800m and 3000m, or if
you are feeling brave, the Pole Vault and 2000m steeplechase. The timetable is as follows: Men
Recent Activity AchievementsI picked up on 21 club members and friends reporting recent activity achievements this week.
Paul & Julie's picture from Kingdom parkrun shows Paul, Julie, Jan, Olivia and Vera celebrating Julie’s very rare or even unique hat trick of Run 250, volunteer 50 and location 100 on the same morning. Mike also pointed out that his daughter, Zoe Butterworth, is approaching her 500th parkrun. She is currently on 496 and has recently been running at Guildford parkrun. I failed to spot Jas at the European Championships. Perhaps he wasn't there!
Roderick Hoffman parkrun Results for Saturday 13th August 202229 activities are recorded this week. Please get in touch if your activity is missing.
parkrun Notes Saturday 13th August 2022 (just notes this week, Steve's PC has heatstroke)This week our event numbers include 99, 100 and 101. David Cowell (19:30) was our faster runner this week, at Wollaton in Nottingham, while Mike Dennison (20:22, 81 .59%) achieved the best age grade at Prospect Park (Reading West). John Taylor(20:53) continued his summer nationwide tour and popped up at Seaford Beach to establish a new club record - BA park #668. Trish McCabe - Oak Hill takes her London tally to 53 out of 59. I was proud to be lapped by my grandson at Hazelwood, he would give Jacob Stenham a good race. He is moving to a new school in Ealing next month and may have Saturday morning rugby so I don't expect it to be a regular occurrence! Steve Newell parkrun Tourist Achievements (if not interested, then please retune to the Light Programme)Those of you who like to visit new parkruns, but like to revisit old ones as well, might like to consider other ways of measuring your progress and comparing with that of others - as well as total parkruns attended and different events attended. This note describes three other measures and uses my results grid as an example (image below). Rutter TriangleThis is the highest number (n) where you have done one parkrun n times, another (n-1) times and so on down to one parkrun once. In the diagram these are the parkrun occurrences shaded in yellow, and with Saturday's run I achieved a Rutter of ten. That is impressive but I do know of someone with a Rutter of twenty! Note that some tourists have the tighter rule that you have to have one parkrun with exactly each number of counts - so for example if I ran next week at Crane Park my Rutter score would collapse to five because I'd no longer have a parkrun I'd run exactly six times. P IndexYour P Index is the highest number where you have run that number of different parkruns that number of times each. For me this is currently 5, in the diagram these are shown in bold with a black outline around the 5x5 grid. If I ran at either Bedfont Lakes, Black Park or Gunnersbury next week I'd improve my P Index to 6. The record P Index I'm aware of is 14 (yes, 14 parkruns 14 times each). Your P Index is shown by the Running Challenges App (and others). XYThis is the largest count of parkruns in an X by Y rectangle on the table, where both X and Y have to be greater than 1. My XY is 100 because I have run 50 parkruns twice - this is shown by the red outline in the diagram. It is important to consider all of the rectangles on the grid - for me the second highest score is the 11 parkruns I've run 4 times each. If I stopped repeating more distant parkruns then this area of the grid might become more important to me. The three highest XY scores I'm aware of have all done two parkruns a large number of times, loyal parkrunners who at some point have had to switch from one event to another. Darren Wood is currently on 516, Stuart Lodge is on 496, Chris Hammerton is on 436 and our own Alan Anderson is on 422 due to his runs at Bushy and then Gunnersbury. Alan will slip down this leaderboard until he has run at Osterley another 55 times, then he'll start to rise up it again!
Full club parkrun database - {read access to club parkrun database} - Download and explore. Club Event Map: [Clickable link to Google Maps] Training Plan - ResultThe 8 weeks of my training plan finally came to an end on Sunday 7th August and I am very pleased to say that I did not miss one session. However, I did have to mix up the sessions during the week as obviously I could never have a rest day on a Saturday! My parkrun time prior to the 8 week plan was 24.30ish and a hell of a struggle. I felt absolutely exhausted and gasped for breath all the way round! So before I started the plan I wanted to have in my head what I wanted to achieve and how I would judge the success of it. To break 23minutes was my goal and more importantly feel stronger and more confident whilst running. What I particularly liked was, it kept me focused. I had to be patient and follow the plan, especially when it said ‘easy run’ on a Saturday morning!.. I incorporated a parkrun into a longer ‘easy’ run or used it as a threshold run, depending on what the plan said. After 4 weeks there was a ‘max effort’ 5k with 15 min warm up and 15 min cool down….(subtly increasing the mileage to nearer 10k than 5k)! I used Clapham Common Parkrun for this and ran 24.24.on a flat trail path course. So after 4 weeks of the training plan I had only improved by about 6 seconds! but I did feel fitter and stronger…that is of course, not allowing for different course anomalies! The times were quite disappointing but I was encouraged by the fact that I was feeling physically better which gave me the confidence to continue. I carried on with the plan as they say ‘trust your training’. After 8 weeks we attended Chasewater parkrun… 1 lap on trail and path and I was very pleased to break 24mins…23.30… I did however wear my new Alphafly trainers!….hmmmm!! The actual race that we had planned to attack was on Monday 8th August at Battersea Park…2 laps on road and flat.. Slightly faster 23.11 and again in my Alphaflys!… So…..what do I take from this……firstly it’s a reminder of how hard running is….you can’t ‘just do it’…you only get out what you put in and sometimes you don’t even get that! I enjoyed the program, there was much more mileage than I was used to but not as much ‘fast’ stuff. The basis was 40-60 min easy run 3-4 times a week with one other faster session. Would I have achieved this time without following the program?…maybe?….but pleased I had the discipline to continue with it. The next thing to consider is the shoes….they are actually called ‘Alphafly
next 4%’……how much time did I take off??…..you do the maths! Julie Barclay Roderick adds... Paul Watt and Julie are able to train and support each other, including some
competition. Their parkrun age grade results make interesting reading. Prior to
the 2020 lockdown Paul would rarely get a look in - Julie's age grade averaged
75% to 80% whereas Paul's was 65% to 70%. But since then Paul has come on great
strides (it's only Mike Dennison's similar improvement that has stopped Paul
getting the "Most Improved Runner" award for the last couple of years). in 2021
Julie was still averaging 79% but Paul had improved to 76% and in October 2021
"beat" Julie for the first time. They both had a reduction in form towards the
end of last year and at the beginning of this year were alternating who would
get the better age grade - though both averaging about 70%. But from the last
week of March onwards Paul has "out-graded" Julie, with just one exception at
Henley Bridge at the beginning of June. Paul has averaged 75% since then but
Julie only 70%. But with her recovery training programme she cracked 80% at
Chasewater and topped the household age grade despite Paul getting his second
best ever age grade. But, you are only as good as your most recent parkrun and
Paul managed to top Julie at Kingdom on Saturday. May the competition continue
(and remain friendly!). The reason I've been aware of this is because
it'll be one or the other of them that take the club age grade record at the
tourist parkruns that they do - often taking that record off from me! Something with fewer %ages - Commonwealth Games Report by Janet SmithWhen they released the 2nd batch of tickets for the Games, I thought I would try and get some. I chose a morning session rather than evening as didn’t want to be driving home at midnight. I used the Jaguar Land Rover park&ride facility and that worked ok. It was an early start from home, 05:40 as we had to arrive in the car park at 8am. On the schedule it was the men’s hammer qualifying, but it ended up being the women’s hammer qualifying which was great. Our seats were high up behind the hammer cage. Oxygen was required walking up the steps to the seats!! We also had a great view of the women’s High Jump qualifying and the men’s decathlon Long Jump. The upgraded Alexander Stadium looks amazing and a massive improvement. I just hope that they use it for comps in future like the British Masters. We left the morning sessions a bit early but didn’t want to get caught in the scrum exiting the stadium. WE headed into the centre of Birmingham and went to see Perry the Bull. He was very impressive. It looked like he was made from Iron but it was actually a very lightweight foam. This is why he can’t stay outside indefinitely. Using some contacts, I got our names on the guest list for Team England House. It was located at The Canal House restaurant, and we had a table booked for us. It was a nice calm space to be after the craziness of the merchandise shop and Centenary Square. I spotted Fred Sirieix in there from First Dates. His daughter won gold medals in diving. We headed home about 6pm after an excellent day in Brum. The city did an amazing job hosting the Games.
Janet Smith Next Digest - Results, news, pictures, feedback, jokes, stories - send them to the editor, Roderick Hoffman, at news@barunner.org.uk. Not for you, no longer interested? remove me please. Difficulty viewing this? Read it from the website:- http://www.barunner.org.uk/News Latest.shtml. Club website: www.barunner.org.uk.
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