Five Go Adventuring Again

03/10/2024News

Andy Lawrence crosses the finish line at the Berlin Marathon in a club record time of 2:29.26 with a negative split – 1:15.03 v 1:14.24.
He looks like he could run it again.
A magnificent achievement Andy

Pride of place this week goes to Andy Lawrence on running the Berlin Marathon in a scarcely believable time of 2:29.26 to break the club record. We had 3 other members amongst the 55000 runners listed in the results as club members who also competed.

There is an important note regarding the club’s Annual Awards on 9th November, so be ready to dig out your glad rags for what is bound to be a memorable night.

We have a notice about the importance of Cross Country training on the Welcombe Hills on Sunday mornings for our junior endurance runners.

Five of our Merry Men ventured in to Robin Hood country for the Robin Hood half marathon last weekend.

Finally last week’s note about the draw for places at next year’s London marathon listed the wrong year. I’ve righted that wrong.

Take care.

David Jones

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Awards Presentation Evening

Our annual Awards Presentation Evening is an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of the whole club and in particular our athletes and is always very popular.

Apart from the major annual awards that includes Athletes of the Year, trophies and medals will be presented for the Club Championships and our successes in the various competitions we have been involved in.

A lot of preparation goes into making our awards a special evening for our athletes and we hope you will come along and enjoy the celebrations, so please be prompt in letting us know you will be attending.

The evening will be FREE and there will be goody bags for the young athletes. There won’t be a licensed bar and so you are welcome to bring your own refreshments and snacks.

As usual we are anticipating a big turnout for the awards as we have so many members across the whole club and as space is limited, we may have to limit numbers of tickets per athlete/family. It will be first come first served, so please reserve your seats now.

The closing date is 2nd November.

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Please follow the link to RiderHQ to reserve your seats for the evening.

https://www.riderhq.com/events/p/s2erax5t/f/stratford-upon-avon-ac-awards-presentation-evening-0

Click on the blue link ENTER

You will be asked to make separate reservations for each adult and junior attending, selecting the respective category, Parent/Guardian/Guest, Senior, U17+, U15, U13, U11, Child Guest.

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We will be running a raffle of hampers made up from the generous donations of goodies from everyone, so please bring something along on the night. Thank you.

We look forward to seeing you

SUAAC Executive

Berlin Marathon

Runners listed as our club members in the Berlin Marathon results.

Andy Lawrence in full flow.

Berlin Marathon

2:29:26

Report – Andy Lawrence

After missing out on my Sub 2:30 goal in London by 55 seconds, I locked my focus on Berlin to achieve my biggest race goal yet.

I had heard people say that Berlin has got huge PB potential because of its pancake flat route so it seemed perfect to right the wrong from London.

The conditions were absolutely perfect and we flew off the start line and into the opening miles of carnage which is always present at a major marathon with people weaving in and out of one another.

I found myself at the side of the road at 6km having to have yet another wee but other than that, the race was going well with my pace and more importantly, my heart rate very controlled.

I felt so good going through half way in 1:15:03 but I knew I was going to have to negative split to achieve the goal.

With 5k to go (and still feeling relatively good), I knew my watch was running about 500m ahead of the official kilometre markers (predicting a 2:27 finish) so I gave it absolutely everything in those last miles to get over the line in time and to make sure my early pit stop wasn’t the deciding factor.

Crossing that line and reaching this goal is a moment that’ll live long in the memory!

I’d recommend Berlin to anyone. What a course! What a city! What a race!

Nigel Chidgey

Nigel with his well earned medal

Nigel’s Berlin Marathon

Report – Nigel Chidgey

Back in 2003 someone said to me what do mean you’ve “only” done a half.

So in 2004 I attempted my first marathon, in Portugal of all places.

Little did I know 20 years later I would be attempting my 18th marathon and my 4th major.

My aim was not just to complete Berlin but at the age of to 60 get a PB and a qualifying time for Boston.

A big call, so last November I joined SAC, put a plan together and as the months passed my PB for park run and 1/2 marathons were coming down. All seemed to be coming together with just one leg niggle.

Then the weekend arrived, all seemed well, even the weather was looking good. The 50th anniversary of the Berlin Marathon was here.

All started to plan, apart from a lot of weaving, I guess fitting 55000 runners through the streets of Berlin is a challenge. Cutting a long story short I didn’t hit the target I wanted but got a sub 4 and that’s a 20 year PB.

Well done to the other 3 Stratford runners, some fantastic times.

I just need to work out how to get in the other 2 majors!

Chris Bloomfield’s medal

Chris and Debbie’s Berlin Marathon

Report – Chris Bloomfield

Those who know Debbie and myself know that we never do things the easy way. Whilst this often makes for a more memorable time, our trip to Berlin for the marathon had tested both our patience and resilience to the max.

We booked our marathon through Sports Tours International last year, guaranteeing our place with a deposit. Unfortunately we delayed getting our flights which meant there were no direct flights available within our budget. So I got tickets with a connecting flight and kept my fingers crossed.

A few days before, it started raining in Warwickshire, and it didn’t stop for days. So much so that parkrun was called off. Little were we to know that the same storm was now heading for the Netherlands. It meant that our first flight would be delayed and we would then miss our connecting flight. Panic set in when we got some misinformation that both flights had been cancelled but this turned out to be untrue (thanks very much KLM AI chatbot website 🙄).

We did in fact make it to Schipol but when we landed we were informed that our new connecting flight time was 20:45 on Saturday 28th September, landing at 22:00, so we would miss the Expo and our chance to pick up our race bibs.

Panic set in again. Debbie’s Fordy clubmates were stars, looking up alternative routes for us to get to Berlin in time. They all meant overnight train or coach journeys but at least we’d get there. Debbie text messaged our tour guide to see if there was any chance of a proxy pick up at the Expo. Whilst this was a no-no, they would be holding an emergency pick up point for all those whose flights had been delayed.

We had to be at the race HQ for 7am Sunday morning. That gave us options. It would mean a long day but it was better than gambling with the trains or coaches. So we spent the next 26.5 hours at Schipol airport. There was an airside hotel, so we managed to get the last room there and had a good nights sleep.

As we were missing all the shakeout runs Saturday morning, we did a very cheeky 30 min run around the airport, only being told off by security in the last 2 seconds (don’t do it kids!). The rest of the day was spent eating, reading and resting. Thankfully they have some very good seating for just this sort of thing at Schipol.

We finally got on our flight and the rest was easy! Even our hold baggage turned up at Berlin and we had a 25 min taxi ride to our hotel. The night manager at the hotel was straight out of an East German film, unsmiling and annoyed that we’d mucked up their cigarette break, but at least we were in!

A bit of time sorting our stuff out and we got to bed about 1am… 5 hours later we were up, raiding the breakfast bar for some mobile food and Siri helped navigate our way to the bib pickup point. After a bit of faffing around, we picked up our bib and the other bits we ordered and made our way back to the hotel for a bigger breakfast and to get changed into marathon gear. We then had to make it back to the marathon start point.

To be honest, the marathon was the easy bit. We had just one thing to do and that was to get from A to B. I don’t know quite how we did it, sheer adrenaline and bl@@dy mindedness I think. Knowing our friends and clubmates were out there driving us on really helped. I’d been hoping to run a time but because of our circumstances chose just to run with Debbie.

The course is notoriously flat, so it was relatively benign. There were some lovely gentle downhill slopes. Joining Debbie in the last wave was probably a good thing after what had happened to us. We were at the front of that wave as we finished with approx 11000 behind us (54000 finishers!). Debbie said Tower Bridge on the London Marathon course may be iconic, but Brandenburg Gate tops that. Never was a race so hard to get. This made the medal even more sweeter. Both of us had wanted better times but we were both happy with what we had. Any time was better than what we had been facing 48 hours earlier.

Each marathon I do, I learn an awful lot. This one, apart from anything else, we learned to book flights earlier so you don’t need to get a connecting flight! I’ve done marathon distance five times now and this was the first time I got through it without getting any cramp.

Discussing this issue in the past it was often said I wasn’t fuelling correctly but my training runs on long distances didn’t cause cramps so I made a conscious decision to hydrate more and hey presto!

Congratulations to all who ran it and thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who helped keep our spirits up whilst we were dealing with everything. We couldn’t have done it without you.

An Important Notice

Junior Endurance Group

Cross Country Training on the Welcombe Hills

Sunday mornings 9.15 -10.15am

The junior cross country season will soon be upon us with the opening fixture on 13th October at Walsall Arboretum.

Cross Country training resumed on the Welcombe Hills a couple of weeks ago and the turnout of juniors has been somewhat disappointing with just single figures each week despite the presence of volunteer coaches to lead these sessions.

Members of the junior endurance group work hard on both Tuesday and Thursday evenings at the track but cross country specific training on the hills is a vitally important part of preparing for some of the challenging courses athletes will compete on in the coming season.

It would be wonderful to see a greater number of attendees on Sunday mornings in the weeks ahead to help ensure that the club continues the success of recent years in the West Midland Young Athletes Cross Country League.

Please ensure that all athletes who intend turning up on Sunday add their name to the list at registration before Thursday’s track session.

Tim Hutchinson, Graham Black, Richard Dobedoe, Wayne Vickers and Pete Sugden.

Our Merry Men after the Robin Hood Half

Robin Hood Half Marathon

Report – Tim Hutchinson

Five go on an adventure to Nottingham for a half marathon.

A plan seemed to form a little while back in Graham Black’s head that he wanted to run 1:28:00 for a half. He put in some really great training and it was looking promising but with a couple of weeks to go COVID got him…

Part of the plan was that Richard Dobedoe was going to pace him and anyone else that wanted to climb on that bus, that included me.

Richard worked hard banking miles and really got his fitness back after a lay-off following a stress fracture in his foot.

Wayne Vickers had joined the plan early on and had also got some good training in and was looking like he’d be on the bus with Richard and Graham but then after another holiday ended up with the side effect that holiday food can bring on he lost some training time and miles.

My training over the last year has been a bit lackluster to say the least, with a change in career direction and then osteoarthritis causing considerable ankle discomfort not helping and just when I was starting to get the mileage back up, whilst working in Cornwall, I managed to roll my ankle whilst out for a run in the evening. Luckily it got better quickly, so I would give it a go.

Last to join was Pete Sugden, unsure how an ongoing (age related, like my ankles, knee issue). Pete remained undecided about being on the bus.

After any early start we arrived in Nottingham, almost perfect day, 11 degrees, overcast and only a slight breeze, a perfect day for a race if you’ve trained well!

Richard was the only one of the crew that was still up for the challenge of 1:28. The rest of us were all hedging our own bets as to what we hoped for.

The race route, starting on Victoria Embankment park by the river, is all in the city and takes a twisty turny route up and down around some interesting sights and architecture, passing back along the outward route once or twice.

Wayne and I stuck together whilst Richard set off on his quest, with Graham close behind, for how long we didn’t know. Pete was a short way behind Wayne and I, until we both seized the opportunity of a pair of green plastic tardis type structures in Wollaton Park (my favourite national xc course) where he got by us.

After a 90 second pause we were off in hot pursuit, a club vest came into view which unfortunately turned out to be Graham who was struggling. COVID is still out there!

Pete eventually came back into sight but was 30-40 seconds ahead with just over two miles to go. No chance of catching him.

The finishing straight comes back along the embankment by the river and then turns into the park for the home straight across the grass.

With Richard and Pete already in Wayne and I had said “no sprint finishes eh!”

Graham made it back with the challenge of 1:28 still to work for.

The eagle-eyed of you may have spotted that last week’s note about the draw for London Marathon places stated the year as 2026. It should of course have been 2025.

London Marathon update

Earlier in the year I asked for our club members who had been rejected in the ballot for a place in the 2025 TCS London Marathon to tell me so we could raffle our club places. I am now told that the marathon people won’t allocate places until November so we won’t have our draw until we know how many places we have.

I do understand that they have cut back club places again so we will have fewer places than before but I’ve no confirmation yet. I’ll be doing our draw for club places in November or as soon as I have confirmation of our club places.

Just to put it into perspective we had 45 rejections from the marathon who will be going for our possibly two places. So best advice is to do a Good For Age time or get a charity place, charities always seem to have plenty of places on offer if you are able to raise enough money.

Thanks

Paul Hawkins

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