V S Update - 2 January 2016
Tue
5 January training; Peco Race 3, Cross country entries; Membership; Annual
awards addendum; Triathlon annual review; Results from Chevin Chase and Abbey
Christmas; Report from Everest Marathon
But before we get down to business, firstly Happy New
Year to everyone!
Tuesday 5 January Juniors Training
Again the session is likely to be off, but please see the
website www.valleystriders.org.uk
on Monday morning - there will be a message near the top of the Home Page.
Peco XC Race 3 at Middleton Park - Sunday 3 January
For race information, see http://www.pecoxc.co.uk/pages/race3.html
Special information for Valley Striders
Juniors,
just pay on the day.
NB if you ran in race 1 or race 2, remember to bring your number
otherwise you'll be charged for a replacement
Seniors, if you ran
race 1 or 2, remember to bring your number otherwise you'll be charged for a
replacement
Seniors, if you have
been registered but did not run race 1 or 2 your number will be available at
the Valley Striders flag, go there first as you will need to know your number
before you pay on the day
Seniors, if you've not been registered, you'll need to go
to the "Guest" registration.
Note that Grand Prix points will be available!
Cross Country Entries - action required!
We are now taking entries for the following races, please email [email protected] -
names for both needed by 10pm on 10 January please.
Northern XC Champs - 30th January - Blackburn - names so
far - Liz Wood, Pascale Fotherby, Daz Hibberd, James Tarran, Jon Pownall, Kevin
McMullan, Matt Hallam, Paul Fotherby
National XC Champs - 27th February - Donington (Derbyshire/Leicestershire
border just off M1) - names so far - Liz
Wood, Pascale Fotherby, Daz Hibberd, Gary Mann, Jon Pownall, Kevin McMullan,
Matt Hallam, Paul Fotherby
Note that entries have now closed for the Yorkshire XC
Champs on 9th January, we have 11 senior men, 9 senior
ladies, one U20 lady and 3 girls - good luck!
Overdue Membership Fees
Of the 415 paying members last year (Sep 2014 to Aug
2015), 265 have renewed (thank you), 5 have resigned, and 145 are still to
pay. Please check www.valleystriders.org.uk/vsmemreg.htm
and if it says "Due" by your name, please pay £29 adults or £15
juniors & 2nd claim to Sort Code:
53-70-00
A/c Number: 72143878.
NB if you're owing money for anything else
(e.g. Xmas party, Peco XC) (hint), please pay to "AC Payments" Sort Code:
53-70-00 A/c Number: 72143851.
Annual Awards
Apologies
that in the last email I omitted from the list of awards the 2015 VS Fell
Champions who were - drum roll - Ross Bibby and Kim Spence.
Also
to say that £66 income from the raffle has been donated to Lineham Farm
Triathlon
Annual Review - from Mike Furby
For those who were not at the
Christmas Party you may not know that we presented some Grand Prix T-shirts to
our Triathlon GPO winners. Those winners were Sue Carr and Vernon Long in the
Vets and Daniel Price and Alison Price in the Seniors
with Dan and Ali winning overall.
The competition was really close in all 4 cats and I know that we have some more
ladies for the Vet cat too. The lead changed hands multiple times with the
ladies generally leading it out between Alison, Sarah Shanks, Sophie Johnstone
and Anna Hobbs. The mens was between Dan and John Shanks, but us older fellows
Vernon and myself kept them honest. In the end the
closest result was the Men Vet cat and I thought I'd won it if I'm honest, but
Vernon put in some late races, but more than that with some great results
including an AG win at Brownlee Tri.
I think the GP went well seeing as it was highly experimental, however, maybe
there are some tweaks needed. One thing I would like to do is cap the number of
scoring events to 8 as it was unlimited and Dan and Ali started to run away
with it, not that capping to 8 would have changed the result in the end other
than some re-ordering (i.e. Anna would have beaten Dan into 2nd place overall
but would not have beaten Alison), but it would have allowed others to try and
close. I may reduce the other bonuses as well for competing in different types
of event from 10 to 5 points.
The year was really positive for us as a whole. As well as the triumphs in our
own comp and one win already mentioned, we saw a good number of actual wins in
the ladies, even more AG wins and even some AG wins in the mens too. We also
had that team win at the Leeds Xpress and in general at the local events we got
good numbers out. Also, that we got a few more to race for VSTC rather than
going unaffiliated was nice, especially as some of those we persuade to race
for us also took podiums, despite their reservations "are you sure you
want me in the team?". The answer was "yes we do" and the
results show why that was right. There was also success at the GB level too,
John and Sarah racing for GBR in Spain and also some other club member who will
hopefully be wearing the club kit soon (Dave and Dawn Morley) and there is of
course Matt Hallam who continues to win at the highest level.
Next year we will have some big turnouts again at those key local races, the
biggest being the ITU Leeds tri in June. I reckon there are more VS members in
that race than I am aware of, so I'll be trying to pick them out and sign them
up. I've gotten myself some personal goals too with the dubious benefit of
moving up an age group I will try to meet the team GBR long or middle distance
tri quali times. I'm close but have never quite made it,
next year seems as good a chance as ever. Perhaps others will look into it too.
In the meantime, enjoy the Christmas break and get mentally prepared for the new year!
NB Table on VS website www.valleystriders.org.uk/triathlon/vstc2015.xls
RESULTS
Chevin Chase
Pos Name Gun
time Chip time GP Pts
16 Daryl Hibberd 00:45:10 0:45:02 100
52 Gary Mann 00:49:30 0:49:27 99
53 John Shanks 00:49:32 0:49:29 98
67 Dan Murray 00:50:23 0:50:19 97
71 Mark Metcalfe 00:50:30 0:50:20 96
143 Samantha Harris 00:54:30 0:53:58 94
150 Ian Sanderson 00:54:51 0:54:38 93
177 Simon Redshaw 00:56:15 0:56:12 92
218 Steve Dixon 00:58:20 0:58:12 91
261 Sue Sunderland 01:00:05 0:59:51 90
347 Mike Robins 01:03:19 1:03:04 89
385 John Hussey 01:04:53 1:04:14 88
535 Greg Skerrett 01:09:54 1:09:02 87
618 Lucy Robins 01:14:49 1:14:07 86
626 Tony Haygarth 01:15:05 1:14:34 84
647 Alex Watson-Usher 01:16:49 1:16:04 83
667 Alistair Smyth 01:18:21 1:18:21 82
685 Sarah Mann 01:19:28 1:18:43 81
736 Becky Murray 01:26:38 1:25:45 80
"Abbey
Christmas" Race - Monday 28 December
The race HQ was the Abbey Inn close by the River Aire on
the same day that Kirkstall Road was flooded, so it was not surprising that
numbers were down, there were 33 finishers.
5th overall and 1st woman was Sarah
Grant, running for a change with husband Alex rather than her usual running
partner Rachel Mackie. Their time was
45:58. The winning man's time was 36:21,
but Sarah and Alex were only 45 seconds off the runners-spot.
Equal 32nd were John and Jean Hussey in
1:05:28. So close was it at the back
that if they'd been 4 minutes faster they'd have been in 17th place.
More information about Jason's races at http://www.countrytrailraces.co.uk/
Everest Marathon (from Dan and Alison Price)
Bit about the race route/ history….The Everest Marathon
is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest marathon in the world.
The start line is at Gorak Shep 5184m (17,000 feet), close to Everest Base Camp
in Nepal. The finish is in Namche Bazaar at 3446m (11,300 feet). To make the
course 42 km (26.2 miles) when you reach Namche you have to complete a further
6 mile loop to Thamo and back (mentally at this point it feels quite tough).
You may wonder why our times were so slow but although it is net downhill there
was 1150m of ascent.
After a few doubts caused by the Nepalese earthquake
earlier in the year the start list was a slightly reduced contingent of 49
runners (22 Nepalese, 27 'Visitors'). There was much interest at the start and
at around the 5hr30 mark at the finish as the Nepalese pro sky runner, Mira
Rai, was the focus of a BBC film crew (making a documentary to be broadcast in
the Spring of 2017). We skilfully managed to avoid the
film crew by running slightly slower than Mira.
42 runners completed and 7 retired.
Alison finished in 6hrs 27 (5th Lady 1st non-Nepali), Dan
finished in 6hrs 59.
Would definitely recommend this race to
others. The race was just one day of an amazing trip.