We are planning on making the pub runs a monthly “fixture” in the Steyning Running Calendar on the third Tuesday of each month. So, the next pub run will be on Tuesday 16th July 2013.

Yesterdays run took us round some of the wonderful countryside we have round here at the foot of the South Downs; we split in to 3 groups to cater for all abilities. I’m not sure that all of the faster group stuck to the same route because I did see a few of them running the opposite direction to everyone else !

Before the next pub run I will post the routes on the website so that people can familiarise themselves with the route beforehand

Anyway, this is our group of runners (apart from one or two of the speedy ones who had already started !)

For anyone that wants to join us (but doesn’t want to run) we aim to be in The Star just after 8pm so feel free to come along

Hope to see you all there !

Next 2 races:

1. Burgess Hill Runners’ “Downlands Dash” [5 miles] in Hassocks  = 12.30pm on Saturday 22nd June ……….. If you want me to enter you, you must let me know by 7pm on Wednesday 19th June.

2. Littlehampton Beach Run [5 miles] = 7.30 pm on Wednesday 26th June ………… If you want me to enter you, you must let me know by 7pm on Sunday 23rd June.

Please see WSFRL for more details (just google WSFRL).

Happy running,

Daniel

Just a quick update to let you know that the Beginners Running Group will be taking part in the Worthing Race for Life on the 14th July. We have set up a Just Giving page to fund raise as a group, any sponsorship would be great  https://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/steyning-ac

If you would like to join us then please email me and I will forward on our group details and the links that you need to join.

The Beginners group is going from strength to strength and now regularly has 10+ runners from complete beginners to people recovering from injury and just getting in to running. We have been out and about on the South Downs and had our first Social Sunday run on the 26th May. In the next few weeks we will be visiting a local Sports shop for video gait analysis to help with trainer choice, I will post details when it is finalised so any club members that want to can join us. I am also in the process of arranging talks from a sports massage therapist and a nutritional expert.

Thank you !

Lisa

Please email me at martinhesketh@btinternet.com as soon as possible to let me know that you are able to help and whether there is a specific job you wish to help with. Please also cajole and encourage as many of your club-mates as possible to pitch in. My thanks to those who have already offered their help and have rolled their sleeves up. Regards…..Martin H

Mark has asked me to write a few words about the Swashbuckler Middle Distance tri I competed in last weekend (2nd June 2013), so here goes…

How it started
Me to fiancée: “How about a romantic weekend in the New Forest”
Fiancée: “Lovely”
Me: “Oh, good. Cos I am doing a middle distance tri on the Sunday and the B&B only takes bookings for two nights”.

So, there it was, all booked up, the Swashbuckler Middle Distance tri in the New Forest. The distances are not half-ironman 70.3 as it has a shorter bike (80KM) and a longer run (22km), so I would have to do some tricky sums to gauge my performance to my previous middle distance race.

Cometh the hour, cometh the…man?!
As the weekend arrived, I had all my excuses ready; bad back, bad knees, too much work and not enough training, bit of cold coming on, all the usual.

My Dad and his wife had also come down to cheer me on, which only added to the romance of the weekend. We all stayed in a B&B just off the A337, which the bike course went along at some point.  I had selected the B&B via the Internet with little or no thought. It turned out our bedroom was just off the kitchen and just off a main road. We also had a couple above us who were down for a wedding near by, so they would be late in. Oh the joy! My only solace of the impending night of no sleep was getting my own back with our 4:45am departure the next morning (this whole paragraph is just to serve as another excuse for a poor time in the race).

The Morning
My alarm went off at 4:15am, I tucked into my tin of Ambrosia Cream Rice in darkness (I got this fuelling tip from the Ironmate website, so deep down I was taking this race seriously). We all headed over, in convoy, to the beautiful Bucklers Hard for the start. Racked the bike and before you know it I had frozen feet and was heading into the water for the 6:15am start.  One last toilet break, tricky when you already have your wetsuit on, and into the water.

Swim
The swim was the usual clashing of bodies, fists and elbows in the face and the occasional heel, emerging from the deep, kicking you in the forehead. People said it ‘was aggressive in the swim’, it wasn’t aggressive, it was just busy. That many people turning at a buoy – there will be a coming together of some sort.

Bike
On the bike I was over taken by the usual high-tech squad on their expensive bikes wearing their aero helmets. But I felt OK and really quite enjoyed my 2hrs 40mins of cycling around the New Forest looking at, and doing my best to avoid hitting, all the donkeys, deer, ponies and cows in the road.

Run
I felt good coming off the bike and the support from the fiancée and family gave me a lift as I left transitions. I think I even managed a smile for the fans.

I managed to pass some of the ‘big-fellas’ who zoomed passed me on their bikes earlier in the race. I eventually caught a guy called Fred, who I had jousted with on the bike before he dropped me (I put it down to the Reynolds wheels he had, rather than all the extra training he had probably done). As we came to complete our first of two laps a massive cheer went up, obviously we thought it was for us and Fred put on a bit of a sprint towards where the finish line was. It turns out the winner had just crossed the line, so that looks like he was going to be about 1 hr ahead of us! We struck up conversion and the miles passed reasonably easily as we picked up other runners and dragged them into our conversions about: ‘why the guys in their aero helmets don’t talk’ (they cannot turn their heads, their aero helmets act like a sail and the would end up in the ditch); ‘how doing your big training session on a hangover mimics the dehydration of a race (it turns out Fred as written an article on this), but most of the conversation was jealous talk about those with superior bikes (how they can’t swim or run and they should spend less on their bikes and more on training for those).  In the last few miles we tried to step the pace up, our running train slowly dwindled until Fred spotted someone from his tri club and mustard the energy to catch him…I was dropped.

In summary
I finished in a very pleasing 5hrs 8mins, a seasonally adjusted half-ironman equivalent of 5hrs 20mins (probably, maybe not though).

The venue for the event is just stunning.  The weather was great and the event itself was well organised and everyone genuinely seemed to enjoy the day.

After collecting my finisher’s medal, see Medal Rating, I met with my entourage only to find out the fiancée had received an offer of marriage from a Bucklers Hard local, he was rich, in his late 70s and had a yacht, he also had the church booked for the following weekend – so he was organised too. Not sure how she managed to turn that one down, I would have been tempted.

I would be tempted to do the race again, although I think I will be going on my own.

Medal Rating
Pretty good, I would put it as a solid 7 on the medal rating.

Ratings: Ironman medals =  10; Brighton marathon medal = 9; Brookes 10k = 5 and the Big Cow Middle Distance medal = 2 (the effort to medal quality is far too low on this one).

Note: I have been known to call the organisers of events asking for a picture of the medal before I enter – I am that shallow. I figure, if I am putting in 6 months of training and paying nearly £100 entry fee, I need a nice bit of bling as a souvenir.

An aside:
It turns out Fred writes for a Triathlete Europe blog and he used the words ‘quite amusing’ when talking about our ’8 minute bus’ run stage.  I’ll take that as a compliment as, normally the word ‘amusing’ is substituted for another ‘a’ word when people describe me.
You can read his article here: http://triathlete-europe.competitor.com/2013/06/08/fred-willis-blog-challenge-roth-week-23

There were solid performances from the other SAC members as the new course did not provide the usual tidal assistance – but one expensive product from Garmin did measure the longer race as only 3.4km! It is however possible that the owner of that product cut the course a bit as he has previous for that kind of thing. The winner of the 3.8km race was 16 year old Chloe Pollard who blitzed the course and the rest of the competitors with a superb time of 44:13.

1.5km Race (28 starters)

08 George Vargha 28:34
26 Ann Naested 45:08

“3.8km” Race (211 starters)

19 Gary Brind 51:12
22 Simon Turk 51:44
38 Lydia Jordan 53:38 (3rd Female)
129 Liz Claridge 1:04:28

PS : This was wrote up by Simon Turk

PPS : Note to Martin; “Simon Turk gets some GREAT times in open water swimming to compare to his pool times – therefore we all think he must have a weak core, as he relies on his wetsuit to keep him buoyant/flat… Therefore please give him some more work to do, thanks very much from your concerned fellow SAC members” (this part was not wrote up by Simon, but “someone else”).

I’ve had a few queries about Romp entries.

As I did last year, I am happy to do a group entry for Steyning………. Let me know by Sunday 30th June (8pm) if you want to race ……….. BUT, we are way of the pace in the league this year, so don’t need to get runners out to deny the competition high-placing spots.

What we WILL NEED  though is VOLUNTEERS.  So please do prioritise volunteering over running . Or, if you really fancy running it – and if you’ve never run it before you should give it a try! – can you also volunteer before of after?…….. I am not co-ordinating the Romp (though I will be volunteering on the night) – but when the posts and the calls for help go out, please do help your club if you possibly can.

Before the Romp there is the Burgess Hill race and the Littlehampton race, so let me know if you want me to include you for either or both of these - but I will do separate posts with more details nearer the time.

Happy running,

Daniel

p.s…… please don’t forget your “Runners’s News” emails for me to post out………

Once again we have been asked to man a checkpoint for the annual British Heart Foundation mountain bike ride along the South Downs Way. This is on Saturday 20th July and I just need 8-9 volunteers  through the day. We’re based at the SD Way crossing near the cement works  and need to check off each bike that goes through. We raise funds for the Club by doing this so if you normally don’t get involved in helping with Club events and want an easy way to put something back into the Club then please volunteer to help. We will have three shifts as usual, approx 9:30 – 12:30, 12:15 – 3:15 and 3pm until the end of the day. This gives 15 mins overlap between shifts for handing on information etc.  Please help with this – look on it as a pleasant few hours spent with friends, helping save lives!!

Please e-mail joan.lennon@gmail.com ASAP. I’ll finalise all names, times etc in the first few weeks of July.

Malcolm would like to thank everyone who volunteered their services to help and hopes that you will be willing to support the new date when agreed. Regards – Martin H