Run in England workshop with a cool race the following Day

The highlights of last week were Saturdays RiE workshop organised by Tina Beresford, the day was split into presentations in the morning and a talk by Dr Ron Hill MBE in the afternoon. On the Sunday was the Pennine Bridleway relay (PBR) race, Royton did very well especially for our first attempt.

Peg Wiseman took us into Phillips park, her demonstration of the 3-2-1 programme was very interesting and I definitely have ideas for "Run at Work" (which I have already discussed with HR!). The basic idea is that you can map out distances of 3 mile, 2 mile and 1 mile, or 3Km etc, even 300m, 200 and 100. You then set goals for runners to aim for, this can be further expanded to run at effort 3 (jog), effort 2 (moderate) and then level 1 (Eyeballs out). Another take is to do 1, 2 and 3 minute efforts, so this way you can make fun, useful running sessions even in a 30 minute lunch window!

The afternoon chat with Ron Hill was a treat and being sat on the front row meant I got the first question in after he talked about his life story. Ron has given an interview to marathontalk.com which the first part was aired last week, so hearing his life story in the flesh made it even more interesting.

Sunday saw the race of the winter which Des Thorpe managed the Royton Road Runners to 23rd and 40th (vets team) which for our first attempt was extremely good. My partner for leg 5 Mike Harrison did very well not to swing for me as I pushed him to the limit, up Rooley Moor road. This steep hill goes on for a mile or two, followed by a very steep downhill which is over very soon. In our recce run a few weeks ago Mike was happy with 1hr 25 and quoted "1hr 20 will be good" on the day. A few weeks before that on the first recce, Bryan Lawton was confident that we could go for 1hr 15 so I set my sights on the ambitious target. We were jubilant at the finish line as I announced to Mike that we had completed the leg in 1hr 14 and 17 seconds.



Mike is on the right and worked very hard throughout the race, picture taken by: Sportsunday.co.uk


Imagine my surprise to see a number of runners who had taken part in the race on Sunday down at the track on Monday evening. This being my 4th supervised coaching session I had planned a pyramid session and Brian Moore was relieved to hear that there was only 1 set to do! Even I am not that cruel and the nights are still very cold so we got them all warmed up and on their way. Richard was very impressive and blasted 13 seconds on the first 100 metres, and the same again on the last rep!

I had to switch my Wednesday run to work (and back) to Tuesday as I had to travel to Birmingham on Wednesday. I opted to do the run on Tuesday as any later in the week might leave my legs tired for this Sunday's Dewsbury 10K. I am very much hoping for a PB on that race and resting my legs after the PBR just a few days ago is the best option. I usually run quite a bit slower on the run home but this week I was just a bit slower on average, which bear in mind going to work it is downhill and obviously uphill coming home.

I cannot wait for the spring and the light mornings, the running to work may well be carbon free but you don't half breathe plenty of carbon from queueing cars and filthy lorries. So when the light returns I will be switching to running on the canal towpath... fresh air and bumps the route from 7 miles to 8... win, win , win