Race Report: Fraserburgh Half Marathon

First I was going to run this race and then I wasn't and then I was again and I'm really glad I eventually did because it is a really great race :-) Basically I went off half marathons a bit after failing to get a PB at Crathes (not the race's fault, it was lovely) but I didn't enjoy it much on the whole, and first I thought I would target Fraserburgh for a PB, then my training went a bit to pot, and I thought sod it, I won't bother. Then my friend Maz said why didn't I run with her and try to pace her to a sub-2:15 (her PB being 2:17:59), and that sounded like a good idea so that's what we did.

We headed off on the Fraserburgh road trip in the Maz-mobile complete with Scott aka Tall Loon aka Mo Bro who was doing his first half, and Annie who wasn't running it but was going along to support and do a 4 mile run around Fraserburgh while we were racing.

We made good time to Fraserburgh and went to register in the manky pavilion with the horrible non-working toilets (the only downside of the day really, and not much of one all things considered), and met up with various folk.

The race started in a field and then headed out along the road and doubled back on itself for the first wee bit, which was a bit odd but gave us a good chance to survey the rest of the field as they ran back! Maz, TL and I all set off together and were very near the back at this point. TL got a "go mo bro" shout-out :-) Then headed off along the main road for a dull but short slightly uphill drag, and after that we were into country roads, parks, trails etc which was lovely. It was quite flat, but with some up and down undulations but nothing long or major.



(I am actually in this picture, just hidden behind the extreme tallness of Scott!)

I was supposed to be pacing Maz but she didn't need that much pacing really, so my pacing mainly just amounted to the occasional "Are you sure you want to be running this fast Maz?" :-) and boringly regular updates on how far we'd gone and at what average pace. Between us however I think we paced it pretty much perfectly and had the satisfying experience of picking off runners one by one over the whole second half of the race, I don't think anyone overtook us the whole way except for one girl at a water station and we soon caught her up again :-) We didn't walk at all apart from a short bit at the top of a hill for Maz to catch her breath, and a short stop at a water station in mile 7 (when my Garmin went onto auto-pause which perhaps thankfully put the kibosh on my pace updates! Note to self: turn off auto-pause for races!). And we actually managed a negative split :-)

At 9 miles TL went ahead a bit and we shouted at him to go on, he protested a bit but was soon persuaded and zoomed off into the distance never to be seen again (well, not till the end). We last saw him as a tiny fluorescent speck way up ahead. He finished in 2:08 having made up loads of time in the last 4 miles.

The last few miles back into the town were great as we kept a good pace, continued overtaking folk (lots of whom seemed to be really struggling by this stage), as soon as we saw anyone in the distance we knew we would be passing them. Back down the hill we had gone up early in the race, across some roads and roundabouts, bit of confusion at this stage about exactly where to go but we made it back into the field, saw 2:13 on the clock and ran for the finish (nearly missing the funnel in my case but let's draw a veil over that). :-)






Maz had a little cry at the finish line, and who wouldn't after 13 miles of my company ;-)

Lots of PBs and lots of fantastic running from all concerned. Maz ran really well and was very strong and great company throughout, I have no doubt she would have managed a PB anyway but it was nice to be a part of it :-)

Mile splits:
# 10:25
# 10:03
# 10:11
# 10:02
# 10:24
# 10:07
# 10:25 (this was actually 11:25 due to stopping at the water station)
# 10:07
# 10:19
# 9:55
# 9:57
# 10:20
# 9:27

Final time was 2:14:06 although it wasn't chipped so probably should've been several seconds less!

Fraserburgh Running Club who organised the race really pushed the boat out and it was the most amazing value for money, for my £14 non-affiliated entry fee we got: a long-sleeved technical t-shirt (admittedly my "small" t-shirt was more the size of a small tent, but hey), a massive spread of unlimited gorgeous free food and drink after the race, a goody bag with medal, sports drink, banana, crisps and chocolate bar, loads of fantastic high-quality pics on the website and Facebook which were free to download, etc.... Hats off to Fraserburgh Running Club, you are brilliant!

I might EVEN go back next year to try for a PB :-O

Pictures courtesy of Fraserburgh Running Club.

Book Review: The Ghost Runner by Bill Jones

The mystery man threw off his disguise and started to run. Furious stewards gave chase. The crowd roared. A legend was born. Soon the world would know him as "the ghost runner".

Bill Jones first heard of the "ghost runner" in 1984, nine years after John Tarrant's death; researching a documentary about the Salford Harriers, an interviewee pushed a slender, battered paperback into his hand. The book, an Athletics Weekly publication, was John Tarrant's hastily written autobiography, also entitled The Ghost Runner. Unfortunately John's literary talent did not match his running talent and the book was not well written, but the story was absolutely compelling and Bill Jones quickly became haunted by this "ghost", determined to learn more about him, and ultimately to tell John's amazing story as it deserved to be told.

Subtitled "The Tragedy Of The Man They Couldn't Stop", it is a moving and inspiring story, yet the character who emerges from this book is not always easy to like - "self-centred, destructive and lacking in emotional intelligence", driven by anger and a burning sense of injustice. But John Tarrant had much to be angry about. Born in London in 1932, due to his mother's illness and later death and his father's conscription in 1940 he spent much of his childhood in a brutal children's home, his only companion and support his beloved younger brother, Victor. It wasn't until 1947 that the brothers, now 15 and 13, finally left the home, moving to Buxton in the Peak District with their father and newly-acquired stepmother.

There wasn't a great deal for young men to do in Buxton and when a new craze for boxing swept the town, John took it up with alacrity. Although he was never destined to be a particularly successful boxer, his years of surviving the harsh regime and defending himself and Victor against the bullies in the children's home had toughened him up and taught him to fight, and he participated in several matches over a couple of years, receiving a total of £17 for his trouble. This paltry sum was to prove his downfall. Discovering on the fells around his home an abiding love and talent for running, when John wanted to join a running club and enter races, dreaming of the success he was sure he was capable of, he was forbidden by the authorities to do so. Thanks to that seventeen pounds, honestly if naively declared, his amateur status had been compromised; he was banned for life, at home and abroad.

Confident that reason must eventually prevail, John embarked on a campaign of letter writing to the relevant authorities, only to be met by rejection after rejection. By this time married (in 1953) to the unswervingly supportive Edie, and working as a rather inefficient council plumber - the first in a succession of jobs which always took second place to running - John, aided and abetted by his brother Victor, embarked on a drastic course of action. If he wasn't allowed to run officially in races, he would run them unofficially, heading to the start line in disguise aiming to jump into the race at the last minute, where he would quickly speed to the front and stay there until he either won or collapsed of exhaustion. His intention: to show the powers that be just what he was capable of, and his genuine desire to run for the sake of it rather than for reward. Thus the ghost runner was born, quickly seizing the imagination of the nation.

Though officialdom refused to recognise his existence, John was welcomed and warmly supported by his fellow athletes, most of whom understood and sympathised with his predicament. (Former international athlete and main rival, Arthur Keily, even wrote repeatedly to the AAA pleading John's case, without success.)

The Ghost Runner is an incredibly good read, following John's running career from his first "ghost" outing at the Liverpool Marathon, to setting world records at 40 and 100 miles, and to South Africa where he ran the Comrades Marathon - a race which became an obsession for him - as a "ghost" and later defied apartheid as the only white man running alongside the black and Indian athletes who, like him, were barred from official races. In the process he earned himself the love and respect of many who were battling for equality in South Africa.

Although Bill Jones never, of course, met John Tarrant, in researching his life he received full and warm co-operation from John's family - his long-suffering, ever supportive widow Edie, son Roger, and indispensable brother Victor, all of whom deserve medals of their own - and found that many others, including John's running contemporaries, were only too happy to talk to him, and indeed believed the telling of John's story was long overdue. Hence, a clear picture of the man and his remarkable, if all too short, life emerges from this gripping book.

You would need a heart of stone not to be moved by this story (the last few pages had me in tears), which can also frequently make the blood boil. John may have been "the man they couldn't stop" but he was also engaged in a fight he could never win, constantly knocked back by the intransigent authorities, who refused to accept that £17 earned as a not particularly good teenage boxer did not render him a money-tainted "professional" for ever after. (Ironic, when money was the one thing John never had.) John wasn't the only person to fall foul of the elitist "cult of amateurism" which was unforgivingly enforced by the upper echelons, but he was probably the most determined to resist, and became a constant thorn in the side of the AAA.

The Ghost Runner is a great read, packed with fascinating incidents and characters, and extremely evocative of the post-war social and political period it describes. There are some extraordinary descriptions of races, including an attempt at the 50-mile world record which took place on a dilapidated Durban track periodically illuminated by flashes of lightning while rain lashed down flooding the track knee-deep in places, fighting broke out between rival gangs, and a local band continued playing regardless.

I would recommend anyone to read the book; it’s a terrific and thought-provoking story of a man whose life and achievements deserve to be more widely known.

Traffic

Not the kind that threatens the lives of innocent runners minding their own business at the extreme edge of the public highway, although I could easily write a blog about that too. In fact just the other day I was thinking how entirely the roads now seem to belong to the car (and the white van and the giant articulated lorry), except for the one near us which currently seems to belong to the students who blithely mill about in the middle of it at all hours of the day and night having never, apparently, been taught the Green Cross Code.

Anyway, I didn't mean that kind of traffic, but the quieter, if no less dangerous, sort which takes place on this here internet. Much to my delight, I have just discovered the "Stats" section on my blog account, which tells you, among other things, from whence my visitors are coming. The blog isn't widely publicised, since my posts are sporadic to say the least, and I'm always vaguely amazed when anybody apart from me reads it, but evidently a few occasionally do, and this stats thing tells me how they get there. Quite a lot are from other blogs who have been kind enough to list me in their "blog rolls", and a surprising number are from Neal Jamison's ultrarunning blog on which he kindly linked to my review of his book, which is quite exciting, though I didn't realise until I looked at the traffic thing and noticed how many hits were coming via Neal's blog...

Most interesting however are the Google search terms which (often mysteriously) lead people in this direction. These include "prom sport" (okaaaay), "bad run before half marathon" (fair enough), "for her new wellies" (????), "giant inflatable Nessie", and my personal favourite, "people walking out of river" (??????). It also shows, along with really awesomely interesting stuff like which browser they use, where readers are from, with the UK unsurprisingly topping the list, the USA in second, and honourable mentions for Germany, Russia, France, Netherlands, Canada, Ireland, Australia and Japan! I had no idea I was so international.

In other news, it's Aberdeen parkrun number 2 tomorrow... I wonder if we will get more or less peeps than last week's inaugural 99? And equally fascinating, to me at least, I wonder if I can (a) beat my PB, and (b) retain my coveted crown of first over 40 woman at the Aberdeen parkrun?

Not exactly my name in lights on Broadway but...

.. something even more exciting... a mention in the back pages of Monday's local paper under Local, National & International Athletics Results, admittedly in very small print and thanks to a somewhat undistinguished 5k time in a field of 99 runners, but hey, first over 40 woman at the first ever Aberdeen parkrun, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, innit? :-)

A small thing but it has made me happy today.

Thanks to Vikki for pointing out my brief moment of running "fame". :-)

It's a mad world inside my head

I was looking forward to the new-this-year, National-Trust-organised Crathes Half Marathon, as it had the potential to be (a) a lovely race on country roads, starting and ending at Crathes Castle, and (b) a reasonable PB opportunity. It was allegedly flattish, unlike any other half marathon I have done previously, and weather permitting, I thought I had a good chance of taking a few minutes off my PB, maybe even achieving the coveted sub-2. I'd trained assiduously and I felt in reasonably good form.

Rocked up to the castle about 11am and caught up with various Fetchies, including Ultracat, weekatiepea and family, Mother Duck, Nywanda (resplendent in skull print leggings) and family, AngusClydesdale, JohnRitchie, and Corrah and Duckinator who were on Fetchpointing duty.

The weather was pretty good, certainly compared to the previous day and night when it had bucketed down ceaselessly. Maybe a smidgen warmer than would have been ideal, but certainly nothing to complain about (or use as an excuse).

Everyone milled around the start line and the pipers piped and the announcer announced and we were off. I set off with a determination to stick to my pace. The beginning was fairly narrow and congested, but soon spread out and I ran the first mile in a pace-perfect 9 minutes. The second one was 8:32. Oops. But it did contain a fair bit of downhill. Third and fourth were 8:50 and 8:48, and I was ahead of where I needed to be for sub-2. Maybe I'm going a bit quick. But I felt comfortable enough and was thinking (oh fatal error!) that a bit of time in hand may stand me in good stead for the later sections of the race.... Thinking, I might actually do this. Just got to keep going at 9-and-a-bit mile pace. I can do that.

However. Miles 5 and 6 were getting slower - 9:20 and 9:46. Mile 7 was slower yet at 9:52. I was still just about on target overall, but no longer ahead of it, and the splits were deteriorating. Maybe I set off too quick. But it wasn't that quick - it's not like I was doing 7-minute miles. I know I can run at that pace for longer than that. Still, something wasn't right. Mentally, I didn't feel good. I had half the race still ahead of me and it felt like a long way. Why? I can run 13 miles - I can run considerably further. But I was bottling it. I knew if I started to take walk breaks, it would be fatal. I started to take walk breaks.

The remaining splits make painful reading: 10:10, 10:35, 9:29, 11:17, 10:54, 10:17. Not only was I way off sub-2, I wasn't even going to get a PB. I needed to HTFU but neither brain nor body were co-operating. Around 10-11 miles I started thinking Dark Thoughts, along the lines of "Why am I doing this when I'm clearly rubbish at it? I can't run fast and I have no endurance. I should give up trying to do half marathons and marathons. In fact I should just give up running altogether and concentrate on something I'm actually good at. Tetris, or crosswords, or something. I'm never doing another race." I did snap out of it somewhere between mile 12 and the finish line. But quite clearly, I need to work on my mental toughness.

That said, it was a lovely race in many ways, even if I spent a lot of it head down, just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. It was well organised and the location was fab. I spotted various local landmarks en route, eg Claramac in multiple locations, MikeR on his bike at mile 3, and Duckinator and Corrah Fetchpointing just before mile 10! I didn't register till later that Duck was videoing throughout... Also heard someone bellowing from behind at me to get a move on at around the 11 miles, which turned out to be Sophster! She came breezing past shortly after. Chatted with various folk in the second half, mainly about the not-quite-as-flat-as-we-were-led-to-believe-ness of the course, although to be fair, looking at the elevation profile afterwards, you could hardly call it hilly. I got a rather too late second wind at about, er, 12.75 miles, spurred on by the proximity of the finish and the final downhill, and coasted back to the castle with a disappointing 2:07:03 - over a minute outside my PB, which was set earlier this year on a hillier course and hotter day.

Everyone else did well - PBs for Mother Duck (2nd lady), JohnRitchie and weekatiepea, and much all-singing all-dancing entertainment was evidently had en route by Nywanda (doing it as a marathon-training long run) and AngusC (doing his first half in 20 years).

All in all, this would have been a great race if I'd just been doing it for fun and not worrying about a time, but given that I was hoping for a PB, it was a bit of a disappointing day for me. People keep telling me it's mental. (Or maybe they're saying "You're mental".) Either way, they're probably right. However, it's made me more determined to crack it next time, and my plan of campaign is, in a nutshell, "train like mad" ahead of the Fraserburgh Half on 20 Nov. I'm thinking a lot more race-pace runs to give me confidence....

And I have no doubt I will be back to Crathes next year for another crack at this race and another very nice t-shirt :)

Ballater 10 Mile Race Report

A quick Ballater blog while it's fresh in my mind and before I go on holiday....

This was my second attempt at this race, after a fairly horrific effort last year. (It was a warm day. There were hills. I was slow. I finished in 1:43:47 and swore never to run it again.) Oh.... Well, I had one more PB to get to complete a clean sweep of PBs in 2011, and in the absence of any other handy 10 mile races, it looked like it had to be this one. Anyway, the horror had faded slightly in my memory and I was very confident of a PB this time round, even if not a huge one, given that the hills were likely to be still there.

We managed to get there on time (always a challenge) and I even managed to get registered and go to the loo without too much of a rush, although the little one then decided to have a fit of "Mummymummymummy" clinginess and I wondered if I was going to have to run the race with a four-year-old attached to my leg. Finally managed to disengage her and head to the start, where we lined up and were sent on our way at 12pm.

It was still warm, and the route was still undulating (very little of it seemed to be flat), but in a direct reversal of my experience at the Stonehaven Half a few weeks ago, the hilly bits weren't as bad as I remembered them. The first 6 miles is on country roads, and yes, they undulated. There were up bits and there were down bits with rather more up bits in the third mile (9:36) and rather more down bits in the fourth (8:44), but none of it was dreadful. Having spent the first few miles dreading a remembered hill at around 5 miles, which had achieved Everest proportions in my mind, the reality was less than I feared. I still walked a bit of it, but managed that mile in 10:02 compared to last year's, er, 11:45. The 6-mile marker took us off-road onto a rutted track, another bit of the race of which my memories had not been fond, and I was starting to feel a wee bit tired at this point, but decided to hang on to the back (not literally) of the guy in front of me who seemed to be going at roughly my pace, although his occasional groans of anguish were a bit off-putting. At about 7 miles, actually I can't remember where it was, we had to cross a bridge, which everyone walked across, I'm not sure why, perhaps we were not allowed to run it? Soon after, we were back on to the road again, and the anguished groaner decided to have a little walk, at which point I went past him.

The route is a pleasant one, quite varied, shame about the number of squished rabbits, or rather ex-rabbits, along the way but I tried not to look at them too closely, though narrowly avoided treading on, or in, one. I also seem to remember a "Caution - Squirrels Crossing" sign at one point, though I may have hallucinated that.

I was quite glad I'd decided to take water with me in my Camelbak waist thingy, although I normally wouldn't bother for 10 miles, but it was warm and thirsty work and there was only one water station at about halfway. I got through most of my bottle. The 8th mile, on a busy-ish road where several vehicles seemed to come perilously close, felt quite tough, but the 9th was largely downhill and I ran this in my second fastest split of the race - 8:54 - though it probably should have been quicker. By the 10th, we were heading onto the narrow path amid long grass which I remembered from last year, and I was flagging considerably, but the sums I'd been doing in my head all the way round assured me I was on for a good PB and on I plodded. Heading back into the field, I saw husband and daughter by the playpark, and a few moments later Mother Duck, who naturally had finished some hours earlier, shouting encouragement. The final lap of the field (having already passed behind the finish line) was painful, but I managed to put on a sprint at the end and overtake the woman in the blue top who'd been close to me for most of the way.

The result: 1:33:52 - a PB of very nearly 10 minutes. I was very happy with this since I had predicted 1:38. Would have liked to have finished a bit stronger, but I ran every mile significantly faster than last year, which is satisfying. It's a challenging course, but it felt easier to me this time despite being another warm day, which reflects my increased fitness (I hope). I may have to go back next year and try to knock a bit more off.....

Goody bag was OK, with a humongous blue cotton t-shirt, bottle of Lucozade, banana and the ubiquitous cereal bar, but sadly no chocolate this year, much to the disappointment of the little one who last year had polished off the lot in the car by the time we got home.

Mile splits, with last year's splits in brackets just for the hell of it - what took me so long last year, especially in miles 4 and 5???

* 9:01 (9:34)
* 8:58 (9:45)
* 9:36 (10:49)
* 8:44 (10:00)
* 10:02 (11:45)
* 9:04 (9:51)
* 9:47 (10:53)
* 10:20 (11:07)
* 8:54 (9:25)
* 9:24 (10:41)

Mile Magic

When I first started running (run-walking, if we're being precise, back in those long-ago days of, er, 2009), a mile seemed like a long way. Running a whole one seemed like a distant dream. Nowadays, of course (now that I'm a super-duper experienced runner *ahem*), a mile sounds like nothing much, but it can still on occasion feel like a long way when you're in the middle of it, and it certainly looks like a long way when represented by four laps of an enormous outdoor track at the Aberdeen Sports Village.

The third Aberdeen Fetch Mile was chilly (where is the summer?) but had a great turnout, with several excellent newbies attending (many of them lured in by Mrs Shanksi, who wasn't even there!) and PBs galore. Due to the numbers and the logistical issues of having enough people to time, etc, we finished up having three mile races. (That's "3 x mile races" not "three-mile races", obviously.) Having knocked 49 seconds off my previous time at the last mile for a PB of 7:30, I knew there was no chance of doing that again, and was hoping just to more or less equal my PB or, hopefully, shave off a second or two. I haven't been doing a lot of "fast" running lately, though, and having attempted some 400m intervals on Thursday at 7:30 pace, had found it pretty arduous, so I wasn't very confident of a good time.

After some cracking running in the first and second miles, we were off in the third one. I got off to a hesitant start as I fiddled with the button on my Garmin. Hamster 1207 and Nywanda were off like rockets, with the rest of us a bit slower - I slotted in behind weekatiepea and plodded along the first couple of laps at around 7:15-20 pace, I think. Woodland Warrior came zooming past at one point quite early on - no idea what took him so long! The wind was strong along the back straight and it did slow me - and everyone - down a bit. I managed to get past Katie near the beginning of the third lap, then noticed my shoelace was partly undone, oops. Well, I wasn't going to stop and fasten it, and I wasn't actually tripping over it, so it just had to stay that way. Nywanda was slowing down by now (no wonder, as she'd done a hellish sounding hill race a couple of days earlier) and I managed to overtake her around 100m into the fourth lap. Hamster and Woodland Warrior were way ahead! Although I was huffing and puffing and generally feeling like I was about to drop dead, I managed to finish the final lap strongly and clocked a time of 7:11 - a PB by 19 seconds - which I was delighted with. It also boosts my WAVA up to over 63% - pretty meaningless really, yet strangely satisfying.

The 100m relay which we finished up with was fun, although my baton-handling skills clearly left a lot to be desired. Mother Duck did manage to get it off me in the end.

A successful morning all round, with lots of excellent running, but special mentions for Duckinator who logged the fastest time of the day with 5:41 (a big improvement on his previous time), Halfpint who knocked an astounding 1 minute 9 seconds off her previous time to win the "most improved" trophy, and Corrah who deservedly won the prize for the best sprint finish with a heroic final 50m.

Now turning my attention exclusively to HM training..... well, after Sunday's 10 miler at Ballater... I have a score to settle with that race.