After last year’s heroic life-saving
effort, which itself followed several year’s worth of eventful ‘man-down’ experiences
in the Anglezarke
Amble 25 miler, Steve C was thankfully able to report that Saturday 11th
February’s running was a relatively
boring one. ‘Relatively boring’ still saw Steve and fellow competitors running pretty-if-treacherous
snow-covered sections of the uplands, and also dropping calf-deep in
trainer-swallowing mire once below the ‘permafrost’ line. The fact it took
Steve five full minutes to undo his shoelaces on completion more or less sums
up just how much this grueller takes out of its truly hardy competitors.
Almost unbelievably though – and once again demonstrating
his unfathomable endurance – Steve was still able to take Len round the
Manchester canicross 5K event at Pennington Flash the very next day. Or rather
the other way round: a fresh-and-keen Len and a sore and tired Steve most
definitely saw Len very much in charge of pace-setting.
In cross-country news, rounds three and four of the
Yorkshire-based PECO series have once again seen Jenna G, Mick W, Emma S and
Rosie Wigg battling it out on behalf of their local first claim club (Ackworth
Road Runners).
Round three was held at West
Park , north Leeds
and was, as this venue nearly always is, a muddy affair. All ran solidly and all
finished high enough in Team Ackworth’s finishing order to count as scorers for
the team. Stand-out performance of the day was Emma’s (130/344 overall
position), who pulled one out of the bag to score for the female first team.
Jenna and Rose finished close behind in positions 154/344 and 156/344 and
lodged solid points for the B team. Mick had his usual solid run and finished 169/460
overall; scored for the male first team, and somehow, mysteriously, managed to
end up with bloodied legs – ahhh, the joys of cross country.
Round four of the series moved to East
Leeds , to Barnbow fields, and continued with the theme of mud but
also featured a few nasty hills for added entertainment. Mick had, by his
standards, a disappointing race finishing in a post-nasty-virus 142/394 overall
position. Rosie Wigg made the top half of the female field overall with a
140/285 finish whilst Jenna, just about 1 minute behind, finished 157/285.
These are very respectable results
given the quality-of-field at PECO events. These are not races for people who can’t face a bit of rough-and-tumble.
The fifth and last of this winter’s series takes place this
coming weekend, good luck to all GVs entering.
Finally, as is frequently the case, Go Veggie has been well
represented at parkruns up and down the country with Emma S adding a new event
(and an age-group win) to her tally when she took part in the Aldenham event
near Watford . Emma reports the event is well
organised, friendly and still very low key.