Mynydd Du

Running Injury Oracle

Comments: 0March 29th, 2012 by Rob

My name is Gavin Burt, I’m a club runner with the Serpentine and the Mornington Chasers running clubs, and I run a sports injury clinic in North London, Backs and Beyond (www.backsandbeyond.co.uk). I specialise in running injuries and have recently set up a free online resource for injured runners called the www.runninginjuryoracle.com which I thought might be of interest to you and your club members.

Just as a brief introduction, the www.runninginjuryoracle.com is an online service that gives injured runners the advice they need to get back on their feet. It helps them figure out what their injury is and then offers expert instructions and videos tailored to their specific injury that will aid their recovery.  The www.runninginjuryoracle.com is featured on the serpentine running club’s website (http://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/advice_health.html), and has been used by Runners World for their injury pages.

I personally created all the content and recovery plans based on my 15 years’ experience as a runner’s Osteopath treating the numerous injuries that plague all of us.  It’s a website where injured runners can quickly and easily get accurate, professional advice that they could trust and that would help get them on the road to recovery, whether they are just starting out or have been running for years. Runners can access the site and all its content absolutely free of charge.

I hope you will see the www.runninginjuryoracle.com as a useful tool for your runners and that you will share it with them either on your website or in your regular newsletters.

Posted in Our Sponsors, Training

The Whole Hog – Brecon Beacons

Comments: 0March 29th, 2012 by Rob

Saturday 12^th May 2012 at Dolygaer Outdoor Education Centre, Pontsticill, Merthyr Tydfil

The Event:

Scrambling through tunnels and mud. Climbing across obstacles. Testing your endurance. This six mile adventure race is an unforgettable experience. The Whole Hog is a cross country run with a twist. It combines an adventure assault course with the stunning location of a wild mountain backdrop and its forests. The action-packed day is topped off in style with a well-deserved Whole Hog party and hog roast. Bring your friends, team up with your workmates or brave it on your own – the choice is yours. You don’t’ have to be super fit to take part – you can come along, enjoy the day and take on a challenge that is completely different! The area of the Beacons at Dolygaer is truly stunning and will challenge your mental and physical ability but you’ll enjoy every minute!

Why take part?

Aside from all the seriously messy fun, the Whole Hog will be raising funds for Marie Curie Cancer Care. By taking part, you’ll be helping Marie Curie Cancer Care nurses provide more support to people with terminal cancer and other illnesses, and their families in your local area. Just £20 will help us pay for an hour of nursing care for a terminally ill patient, allowing them to remain in the comfort of their own home, surrounded by their loved ones.

How to register:

You can take part on your own or in a team of 3. Registration fee is £35 per person (or £105 for a team of 3) and we ask you to try and raise a target of £100 sponsorship each (or £300 per team of 3). You can go online today and sign up at www.mariecurie.org.uk/wholehog or call 01633 853162 or email claire.notman@mariecurie.org.uk

Posted in Up-coming races

Offer – Up and Under

Comments: 0March 29th, 2012 by Rob

On behalf of Up and Under Outdoor Gear I can announce that with immediate effect Mynydd Du members producing a current membership card will be entitled to Contract Prices at all times in our store. These prices are typically 15-20% below Recommended Retail Prices topping out at a massive 75% off and are therefore more competitive than those displayed in the store.

At Up and Under we are proud to be a specialised independent retailer, and are keen to support local clubs wherever we can for our mutual benefit. We may have additional offers from time to time and will request email addresses from your members when they visit the store so that these offers can be sent out as soon as possible.

If your club doesn’t issue membership cards but is affiliated to a National organization that provides you with a membership card this will be equally acceptable if you inform us of this in advance.

You can find out what prices you would be paying when you produce your club membership in store at Up and Under by using the B2B login at the top right of any page of www.upandunder.co.uk

You will be greeted with Welcome back B2B Club Account and you will then see that your club membership provides you with discounts as much as 75% off RRP.

For more information please contact Rob Gordon

Posted in Our Sponsors

Sugar Loaf Race October 2011

Comments: 0October 29th, 2011 by crispin

Foreboding weather didn’t deter. I snapped as many as I could, but didn’t get everyone and the camera enjoyed it less than I did.

Sugar Loaf Race October 2011

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Posted in Race Reports (Fell)

UK Relays 2011 results

Comments: 1October 16th, 2011 by crispin

Just back from an enjoyable weekend at the relays in Kettlewell. We made our various ways to the Yorkshire Dales on Friday, finding out en croute that Angela was pulling out of the Ladies team. Fortunately Naomi’s Mum Sally had come down from Scotland to support, and valiantly agreed to don the hoops. A bit of recceing and interrogation of locals showed us roughly where the navigation leg was going to be – on the flanks of Great Whernside with a long flagged run in. It looked like the navigation might be quite tricky, with rough ground and few features on the upper slopes. This, and a reappraisal of Iain’s likely speed, led us to swap things around a bit in the men’s line up, putting Iain onto the short leg 1 and Mark and Martin onto the navigation leg. The Ladies team re-shuffled to cope with Angela’s absence, giving Sally the last leg.
Saturday dawned glorious with early frost and hanging mist giving way to clear blue skies and autumn colours. Iain and Sharon lined up with nearly 190 others in the village square to start at 10am. Tim Davies led the charge, with Iain comfortable in mid pack. With little racing experience we were all a little nervous of how he would pace the 4.5 miler with such a fast start, but he got it about right and came into the field in 80th place to hand over the Sean and Matthew.

Sharon appeared a few minutes later in 149th place, to set Anne Marie and Emma on their way for the 9 mile leg 2.

This second leg was crucial with two long climbs, a couple of miles of sapping bog, and fast descents on tracks. I was expecting it to take about the same time as a road half marathon. Mathew and Sean picked up 50 places to pull us up to 30th overall, completing the leg in 1:17:37, 19th fastest on the leg. This was a truly impressive performance for two newbies to the sport who have never run in pairs before, especially when you see the talent that was on display in this leg. For example they were only 2 minutes down on Ian Holmes and Andy Peace.

Anne Marie and Emma got round in 01:39:13, also picking up loads of places, and handing over to Naomi and Louise.

Anne Marie was one of the many runners finishing leg 2 slathered head to toe in the black stuff, after a bit of spontaneous bog snorkelling.

Mark and Martin ran a strong leg 3, pulling us up another 9 places and posting the 15th fastest time for the course. The navigation didn’t sound that tricky in the bright sunshine, but if the clag had been down it would have been a different race entirely.

Harry has not been doing much running this year, but is always fit and strong from cycling, and did not disappoint with a solid leg 4 performance. Unusually our demon descender let someone past on the descent, but it turned out to be Tom Adams who posted the 8th fastest time for the leg, so no disgrace there!

Our men’s team finished 22nd overall in 03:54:45, a few places down on previous years, but still a strong performance given the strength and depth of the competition. Eryri finished 16th.

For the ladies, Naomi and Louise were spot on with the navigation but found the underfoot conditions hard, finishing in 1:45:01. They were faster than 31 other teams on the leg! They handed over to Sally for the big climb up Great Whernside.

At the tender age of 67 Sally is very much a novice fell runner, though she has won the V60 category many times in the Lakeland Trail races. Leg 4 at the relays was certainly a new challenge though, especially as she had not expected to run, and had done 8 miles a couple of days before. In the event she ran way faster than expected, bringing the team home in 05:23:46, and 156th place (I think 30th ladies team overall).

We all had a good time in the Blue Bell that evening, and I’m looking forward to next year already.

Full results and split times can be found on the sportident web site.

Posted in Race Reports (Fell)

UK Fell Relays 2011 final selection

Comments: 0October 8th, 2011 by crispin

The time has come to enter the names and numbers. This year they are not allowing any substitutions on the day, so the names have to be in though we can probably shuffle legs around on the day.

Emma is making the tough decisions for the ladies, but the basic selection has been stable for weeks now and everyone is going well. I’m waiting to hear from Emma whether she wants to make any tweaks.

The men’s team selection has been a bit of a rollercoaster, with key performers picking up injuries but talented newcomers filling the gaps. I’ve set up a spreadsheet to calculate best leg combinations, but the problem is I don’t have much idea of the current form of Harry, Martin, and particularly Iain Shaw. Here are a few guiding principles though:

Navigation leg: needs to be safe – better to lose 10 minutes with slower runners than 30 minutes with lost runners. Many top clubs blow the whole event on this leg.

Leg 2 – this should be our fastest runners who match each other well over the distance. Apart from leg 3, this leg has highest potential to lose time if one runner falls to bits.

Leg 4 – longer than leg 1 with a lot more climb so needs faster runner. Needs experience because might be running solo with few other runners to follow or catch.

Leg 1 – some people say you should put a top runner on leg 1 to be up with fast teams from then on. I don’t think that works overall, and wastes the talent; even with a modest start there are other factors like getting the psychological boost of passing people rather than being passed. Note that in 2008 we were 42nd after leg 1 (worst ever leg placing) and still came 11th overall. And for the navigation leg it is an advantage to be starting behind a few more teams.

I’ve used two main inputs. First the relative speed of all runners over a notional 10 miles, taking account known abilities on the fells:

Runner	Time Estimate
Mark Palmer MP	53
Martin Shaw MSH	55
Harry Matthews HM	56
Iain Shaw IS	58
Matthew Symes MSY	59
Sean Taylor ST	59

Second, estimated time for each leg, if it was being run by Mark P:

Leg	Time in Minutes
1: 4.5 miles 1100	32
2: 9 miles 2500 feet	70
3: 7 miles 1550 feet	50
4: 5.5 miles 1600 feet	40
Total	213 (3 hours 23 mins)

These times might be a bit optimistic, but the running around Kettlewell is pretty good. From these figures it is possible to work out the overall time of all leg combinations. Of course, this assumes equivalent performance by all runners over all distances – more on that later. The one fixed point I have held onto is Iain Shaw on the navigation leg, coz he used to map minefields.

I calculated a lot of different permutations, but one came out top. Here are four examples, with the winning combination last:

Leg	Option 1	Time	Option 2	Time	Option 3	Time	Option 4	Time
1	MSH	33.2	MSY	35.6	MSH	33.2	MSY	35.6
2	ST + HM	77.9	MP + MSH	72.6	ST + MSY	77.9	MSH + HM	74.0
3	IS + MSY	55.7	IS + HM	54.7	IS + HM	55.7	IS + ST	55.7
4	MP	40	ST	44.5	MP	40	MP	40
		206.8		207.5		205.8		205.2

I was a bit surprised by the last one here coming out top, but it was clearly the best even if I altered the individual leg time estimates a bit. These options might all look very close to each other, but at this level in the relays 40 seconds can make a difference of one or two places.

The weakness of this model is the relative ranking of the runners which is a bit of a guess. Also it ignores any preferences of individual runners for different distances. I reckon that over 5 to 9 mile legs like these, that doesn’t amount to much in fit runners, but my worry about option 4 is whether Harry is fit enough for 9 miles with Martin!

If anyone thinks the runner ranking above is badly wrong, let me know asap. But as things stand this gives us:

Mynydd Du A

Leg 1 Matthew Symes

Leg 2 Martin Shaw & Harry Matthews

Leg 3 Iain Shaw & Sean Taylor

Leg 4 Mark Palmer

Reserves: Ricky McWilliams and Crispin Flower

Posted in Blogroll

UK Fell Relays 2011 preparation

Comments: 0September 3rd, 2011 by crispin

As usual Mynydd Du intend to take the UK Fell Relays by storm in 2011. Every year since 2006 we have somehow been in or around the top 10, scalping many unsuspecting big guys, and this exposure at the very pinnacle of the sport means that by now several gritty northerners can pronounce our name. We’ve entered three teams this year: blokes A, ladies, and odds-and-sods B. The precise components of these teams are still uncertain, with Damon preferring a holiday in the Aegean, and Martin W preferring to stay at home eating birthday cake, but the ladies team is looking strong and composed. On the other hand we have some promising new recruits, including Martin Shaw’s baby bro Iain – rumoured to be even faster and more mental than the original.

Training and preparation are reaching a frenzy already – here’s me showing that a full-length plaster cast need not be considered any impediment. Well, the consultant said not to put any weight on it. Needless to say, I’m not in the A team this year! In fact I’m not even certain I’ll be able to do anything at all, but plaster comes off 7th Sept so plenty of time to rebuild my shrivelled muscles.

Here’s how the teams are lining up as of September 1st (allocation to legs likely to change!):

Newsflash @ 6th September… both A and B team leg 1 runners have been struck down with “other commitments”. Three more runners now required…

Newsflash @ 8th September… Ben Buckle’s now in the B team; with a few Marathon des Sables etc under his belt, the relays nav leg should be a doddle. Crispin’s prognosis is gloomy though – knee won’t bend and walking = v diff.

Newsflash @ 24th September… ‘B’ team entry rejected! I’ve just been told our B team entry did not make the cut, despite having our entry in weeks ago. Seems a bit odd when clubs like Calder Valley, Mercia and Helm Hill are given five team entries, but I’m sure they had a system. So now it’s all about selection for the ‘A’ team, which may or may not remain as shown below.

Newsflash @ 29th September… Rob Gordon and Ade Woods struck down; ‘A’ team now revised below. Iain Shaw used to map land mines apparently, so no worries for the nav leg!

Mynydd Du Ladies

leg 1 (Solo, 4.5m, 1100’ ascent, flagged all the way) Emma Bayliss

leg 2 (Pairs, 9.5m, 2500’ ascent, partly flagged) Sharon Woods + Anne Marie Harris

leg 3 (Pairs, navigation, 8m ) Naomi Law + Louise Massey

leg 4 (Solo, 5.5m, 1600’ ascent, partly flagged) Angela Jones

Mynydd Du A

Leg 1 Mark Palmer

Leg 2 Harry Matthews & Matthew Symes

Leg 3 Martin Shaw & Iain Shaw

Leg 4 Ricky McWilliams

Reserves: Ben Buckle and Crispin Flower

~~Mynydd Du B~~

~~1 Sam Rhyall ??? Mystery Runner~~

~~2 Ricky McWilliams & Matthew Simes~~

~~3 Ben Buckle & ???~~

~~4 Crispin Flower~~

If you would like to run and are not on this list, please get in touch.

Full details of the event here http://www.relay.bingleyharriers.org.uk/index.html

Route maps (except leg 3) are available here http://www.relay.bingleyharriers.org.uk/courses.html

Posted in Training

Swiss Alpine Marathon – C42 + K31 – Saturday 30th July 2011.

Comments: 0August 22nd, 2011 by Rob

It takes some doing to choose your holiday on the very week that

the Swiss Franc reached an all-time high, but we managed it. We arrived at Davos, some 5,000 feet up in the Alps with a week to go before the race and that turned out to be a good thing, because manufacturing those extra red blood corpuscles to cope with reduced oxygen at that altitude is tiring and until that is complete running is hard work. Straight off the train we had a gentle 6k jog around the lake and repeated that before breakfast the next morning. Then we spent the week running and walking in the mountains, one day listening to the marmot sentries giving their shrill warning whistles as we climbed up to the Sertigpass at some 9,000 feet, before a magnificent descent to take apfelstrudel, (mit schlagobers of course), at an alpine meadow far below. Shortly after we arrived at the restaurant the heavens opened and one of the farm donkeys decided he didn’t like the rain, so he walked over to the door and began hitting the mat with a hoof until he triggered the automatic door and let himself into the restaurant. It must have been something they put in the mountain water, for on two separate occasions on the local bus Colin was accosted by the same elderly Swiss lady runner and invited for coffee and high fives while I was chatted up by a charming Spanish lady runner who invited me round for paella.

Shed a small tear, for much as expected, that wrinkly old Swiss guy, Wilhelm Tell came home first M75+, so that’s yet another British dream washed away in an alpine torrent. But who is that in the Mynydd Du singlet running sure-foot down from the mountain and across the alpine pasture to come steaming into Tiefencastel with a time of 4:51:11? OK, so I left it rather late as it was not until the 41k marker that I passed the third guy, leaving him to totter home a whole 1:27 minutes later. No orchids for coming home second, (out of 4 M75+s), however, but that’s how it is folks. Still 113th out of 157 runners can’t be all bad. So modified rapture and much happiness at not having tripped over endless tree roots or plunged down gorges to a certain fate.

But what a course! Some 3,000 runners started at 7am from

the Sports Centre in Davos with the 31k folk wearing green numbers; while the 42.2k folk had blue numbers and the 79.1k folk were with brown numbers. The route circled Davos and then took off onto farm tracks between Alpine pastures, brilliant blue gentians on all sides and nutcrackers swooping overhead. Many runners were from the flat lands of Northern Europe and it showed as they insisted on running up all the steep bits only to exhaust themselves by the time they reached the top and then they proved to be rubbish at running down hill. Both Colin and I overtook dozens on the descents, (or maybe they were the 79k folk taking it easy?) Around the 20k mark the path narrowed and we ran through the Zuegen Gorge, not the point to put a foot wrong. A narrow footbridge was attached to the side of the railway line at Wiesen as it crossed the gorge several hundred feet above the river and then we went down and down to be greeted by goats and pigs at a small inn with 1983 London Marathon winner, Mike Gratton and the British 2:09 Events contingent cheering us on from the verandah. Here I was delayed for a couple of minutes by the barrier coming down at the level crossing and then the path came out of the pine forest to a spectacular view of the mountains and the descent ahead. Colin came in to the 31k finish at Filisur in 2:26:02, that brought him home 7th M50+ and 36th out of 264 runners. He had just over an hour to recover his breath and in order to cheer me through for my final 12k to the 42k finish at Tiefencastel.

So that is the third marathon chalked up, now there is just the bog snorkel to come. Many thanks again folks for your support for my Age UK fund raising.

virginmoneygiving.com/tomharrison

Posted in Race Reports (Fell)

Year / Location	Overall Position	Position in Category
2010 Lomonds of Fife	9	8
2009 Ennerdale	13	10
2008 Clwydian Hills	11	10
2007 Forest of Bowland	11	8
2006 Castle Carr	13	10

Mynydd Du

Running Injury Oracle

The Whole Hog – Brecon Beacons

Offer – Up and Under

Sugar Loaf Race October 2011

UK Relays 2011 results

UK Fell Relays 2011 preparation

Swiss Alpine Marathon – C42 + K31 – Saturday 30th July 2011.

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