The slightly longer Brighton Half Marathon

 

Just setting off along Madeira Drive, proudly wearing my Parkrun 100 shirt.

Yesterday’s Brighton half marathon was my first for 25 years. The only other one I’ve done is the Portsmouth Half which I seem to remember doing in a sprightly 1hr 36 mins.

My mate Paul who was also running yesterday, took us down to the start on his Vespa. We’ve done this before for the Phoenix 10k but yesterday morning was so cold that we were frozen as we scooted to the start with 7 mins to go. Not the best warm I’ve ever done but I soon thawed out and loved the whole run. Brilliant crowds and hardly any wind along the seafront.  I got to the end in 1:47, cheerfully unaware that
there had been a problem with the course.

Today, I’ve found out that my chip time has been adjusted to 1:44:27, down from 1:47:01 . Yay, a PB! Apparently, a “misplaced turnaround” led to the course being 500m too long.  This made the total distance 13.42 miles.  Is that a world record for an athletics event? Hats off to the organisers for owning up to this and adjusting our times so quickly. Maybe, if this had happened 10 years ago, there wouldn’t have been so many runners with GPS watches to point out the error. The Facebook page on Brighton Half  Marathon is full of messages from Garmin owners!

Well I have to say I’m pretty chuffed  with 1:44 and the extra distance just means I’ve done a bit more training towards the marathon in April.  I’ll definitely do the half marathon again next year.

As for the “human error” that led to the misplaced cones, we’ve all done it and it didn’t spoil a brilliant day. Thanks to all of the volunteers and cheering public who made it such a fun event.

Two Jackals

Update: Two Jackals at Concorde 2, last night.

Way back in 1985, as a student at Portsmouth Polytechnic, I would regularly see two live bands a week at the student union. Tickets were  cheap so nobody minded taking a chance on bands we’d hardly heard of.  Jason and the Scorchers stands out as one of the highlights. For a few years after I’d left Portsmouth, a mate of mine and I would meet up at Victoria station late on a Saturday afternoon and pour over Time Out magazine to pick a pub at random for live music – anything from Irish folk music in North London to Wilko Johnson at the Cricketers near Kennington Oval.

The last year has seen a modest revival in seeing live bands after years of neglect! Reading Festival last year was a brilliant day out – although at my age, a one day pass is quite enough thanks.  It’s the first festival I’ve been to since Cropredy in the 90s.  In November last year I saw The Fall play at Concorde 2 in Brighton.  Brilliant  and  Mark E Smith was on stage for far longer than any of us dared to imagine.  Coming up soon are Bombay Bicycle Club and Rufus Wainwright. Can’t wait for those.

Even more highly anticipated though is tonight’s gig at Concorde 2.   Supporting The Big Pink are Two Jackals.   I saw them play at The Green Door Store over the Christmas period and they were amazing.  I won’t begin to try and describe their music but apparently this  equation does a good job:  Two Jackals = Foals + The National + Joy Division + God Is An Astronaut.  Looking forward to it.

Should be the perfect prep for tomorrow’s Brighton half marathon at 9am.

Brighton Half 2012 and more physics

Brighton half marathon is on 19th February 2012

Only 4 days until the Brighton half marathon. I missed out last year with a calf injury.  It was fairly minor on the scale of injuries some people get but it kept coming back because I didn’t give it enough rest.  Eventually, I decided to get professional help. It’s the first time I’ve had physio but it was well worth the three half hour sessions I had with Mitchell Phillips who now runs StrideUK.  I’ve been using the foam roller he suggested ever since!

 

The race pack came through last week and, as in the previous year, there’s no RFID tag to attach to your shoe laces. Instead, the tag is on the

Bibtags for timing

reverse of the race number.  For my geeky physics teaching brain, this is a treat as I now have a another resource to add to my growing collecting of ‘running physics’.  By that I mean the application of physics in the

design of clothing, shoes, GPS timing, etc, just for runners.  The MYLAPS ‘Bibtags’  use  Ultra High Frequency (UHF) to communicate with antennas in the detection mat. Apparently it’s accurate to +/- 0.5 s. Don’t think I’ll be too worried about that.

Brrrr

Pretending to look warm on the Sussex Downs. Photo Paul Zara

One week to go before the Brighton Half Marathon so @paulzara and I  headed up to Devil’s Dyke this morning for a 16km circuit.  Absolutely freezing!

Brighton has virtually no snow now but there’s plenty up on the Downs and it is beautiful up there – as long as you keep moving! Got to Devil’s Dyke and came across a group paragliding. That’s not something I’ll be doing anytime soon but love watching it. Not sure I’d have the nerve to launch myself into the gloom.

Paragliding off Devil's Dyke this morning.

I’ve put myself down as volunteer coordinator at Brighton Parkrun  for the last couple of weeks and so far so good.  Loads of people have come forward to help and all nice   All of the jobs are easy but yesterday the temperature was below freezing and my handwriting got slower and slower. There must be a way to write and keep fingers warm at the same time. Any suggestions?

After the event, we sat in Hove Park Cafe, entering all the results into the laptop. This is normally a technical challenge that requires three of us to get right but things are definitely getting easier with the new software. All results were uploaded by 11am – a record!

The cafe always has great music playing ( the queues are quite long so it helps ) most of which I’ve never heard before so I’ve started Shazamming it.   Really like this Cay’s Crays by Fat Freddy’s Drop

While I was running this morning, my son Henry was competing for Sussex (High Jump) in the regional athletics finals at Burgess Hill. Good luck Henry

Early morning blues, reds and oranges

Brighton seafront at low tide just before sunrise on 11th Jan 2012. Photo by Paul Zara

The cold mornings have been less of a problem this year but it still feels wrong to go running in the dark.  I need a distraction when doing the longer runs and so most of my routes incorporate Brighton seafront at some point or another. The last few weeks have been great for seeing the light change just before sunrise.  Most visitors to Brighton probably don’t realise that Brighton has a sandy beach when the tide has gone far enough out.  Last week, the beach was dotted with the torchlight of anglers digging for worms.

The tiny white building on the hill is the Chattri.

It’s now only three weeks to go to the Brighton half marathon on 19th Feb. I’m running this year and my number is 1286. If I finish in that position I think I’ll have done pretty well! The event has grown in size to over 10,000 runners so anywhere in the first 9999 would be fine

To break up training a bit, I’m hoping to run past the Chattri monument in a circular route of about 12 miles.  I can just make it out as a small white dot on the Downs if I look out from our loft window.

And finally, it appears that this blog has been instrumental in bringing Steve Ovett’s statue back to life, so to speak. Just days after my last post, The Argus ran a headline:Brighton Olympian’s statue to return. I suppose it could just be coincidence.

Steve Ovett’s foot

The start and finish of the Peace Mile in Preston Park is located near rose garden by the Rotunda cafe.

I’m starting to see a lot more of Preston Park as my training kicks in. It’s where the Brighton marathon will be starting in April.  The perimeter is about 2.2km so I’ve worked out that I only need to do 20 laps to equal a full marathon. That’s the sort of image I need to keep thinking of – only 20 laps! The collection of small white pyramid-shaped stones that once marked out the Peace Mile has all but vanished which is a bit of a shame although the start/finish stone is still there, commemorating  the International Year of Peace in 1986.

All that's left of Steve Ovett

With the 2012 Olympics just a few months away, you would think that Brighton would be making the most of its Olympic connections.  I remember the bronze statue of Steve Ovett before it was sawn off and stolen several years ago. All that’s left now is his right foot, launching the invisible middle distance runner to an Olympic gold medal.

To see something that has lasted a little longer than 20 years, you need to go to the other end of the park, near Preston Manor where you will find the two oldest English elms in Europe.

The Preston twins are over 400 years old.

Brighton 2012

Château Plage on Brighton seafront

The first day of my new 18 week, 709km, medium intensity ASICS training plan began yesterday with a brisk walk along Brighton seafront.  Helen set a fierce pace which practically made it a jog and I reckon it was easily 5km.  So that’s 704km to go.

Getting back as it began to get dark, we then watched almost 7 hours of continuous TV,  which included Hamlet,  Great Expectations and The Royal Institution lecture “Meet you Brain”. Unfortunately you can drink quite a lot of wine in 7 hours so I was particularly unimpressed by the motivational email I received this morning from My ASICS telling me I had a 9km jog to do.

11:30am Just got back from Preston Park – beautiful weather and 9km didn’t seem that bad after all. Hardly anyone about in the park except for a few joggers and a group of super fit under 30s being put through their paces by British Military Fitness.

Rest day tomorrow

 

Job done!

Today, almost 15 months AFTER completing the Brighton marathon, I’ve finally reached my target of £1000.  I have a bit of a stubborn streak that wouldn’t let me close the Justgiving page on £750 and so, every month since, I’ve extended the deadline only to creep a bit closer to the target.

Anyway it’s done now and Ebay has been my saviour. I’ve managed to sell a lot of stuff and made use of Ebay’s charity policy of no fees if the sale price goes to charity.   It’s good to know that my old English Concertina, that tested the patience of the whole family, has now found a new life in Edinburgh.  Some are hoping I’ll do the same with the violin!

A big thanks to everyone who donated something. That £1000 has gone to a great charity and you’ve helped a lot of people with brain disorders.

The National Brain Appeal

6 minute mile!

The Tuesday training session at Withdean had a different format last night: 6x200m, 1x800m, 4x200m, 1x1200m, 2x200m, and then 1mile.

I finally managed to get under 6 minutes for the mile: 5.55 actually! I’ve been trying to do that for over a year now. With any luck, it will help my Parkrun time but I’m not sure how 6mins for 1 mile translates up to 5km. I certainly couldn’t keep that pace up but think I might be able to beat my PB of 19:50.

Come on England!

St. George

Six days to go before the World Cup and I’m starting to get organised.

After several frustrating attempts, I finally managed to import the BBC fixture list into my Outlook calendar and then sync it to my phone. Every fixture is now at my fingertips. An IT triumph!

A family ‘discussion’ about the quality of our TV, which I lost, means that a flat screen HD ready LCD is now imminent. Should it be 26 or 32 inch?

I’ve yet to find my 1970 England team poster that I collected as an 8 year old but when I do, it will be going on the front window.  It was a great talking point with the neighbours at the last World Cup.

A friend has designed some alternative England Tees – designed to let you show your support for England whilst challenging a few myths. Think I like St. George best.

Parkrun was more sweatrun this morning – the hottest Saturday morning this year. I was a bit slower than last week but I missed training on Tuesday so it’s not so bad. One lad, James Oliver, who has Asthma and runs for Brighton & Hove AC , was raising money for Asthma UK – quite a few donations went into his collection bucket – hope he did well.

Well-spoken designs

BBC World Cup fixtures download