Herod Farm Fellrace 2012 race report

I have shamelessly nicked Ians photo. Thanks Ian.

It is a year since we moved to Glossop. Last year, my first fellrace as a local was Herod Farm. I was keen to see how my running has progressed since last year and have very much been looking forward to this years edition!

However, just as an aside from running, for a moment, last year I turned up to the race knowing no-one, not really knowing what was going on, but still had a good time. This year, I am part of the organising club, there were many friendly faces, to say hello to, and others from elsewhere that apparently knew me even though I had no idea who they were.
So socially, fellrunning is a definite tick.

This year, Herod farm was Lynne's first real fellrace- she has done a few navigational races this year, but not a straight through, non nav, hill-tastic leg blast. I'm sure there will be a lovely account on her blog sometime soon.

The weather this year was somewhat different to last, being claggy, wet and horrible for the days leading up to it, and throughout the race as well. The course was muddy and grungy and slippery, but eminently runnable and likely to get churned up if you were far down the field.
After signing in and getting numbers, we jogged up to the start, followed by a quick trip up the first part of the course.
Julien, still with arm in converted sling from crocking his arm at Lads Leap was with me as we came back down the hill to the start- faced with mass ranks of runners- ready to start.

Perfect timing. We slotted in near the front of the pack, and listened to andy's pre-race talk, short and sweet. A rousing cheer was given for Joe Barber, local merchant, race sponser, and this year, participant as well.
All too soon, it was ready, steady, go, and we were off, pounding the path.

I don't know if I am the only one to think about races before I run them- but when I do, I envision myself near the front, running along effortlessly with everyone else, ready to blast out and really put some leg speed in.
Reality is somewhat different.

The lead guys shoot off like gazelles, and I'm trudging up the path, among a crowd of others, struggling to contain my gasping breath, wondering why it feels so hard to run up a slight incline. Barely 200yards into the race I'm out of breath bewildered as to where all my supposed fitness has gone- all illusions of keeping up with the guys at the front, vanished.
I see a few glossopdale vests ahead of me- one of them Julien- who is "taking it easy" on account of his fractured shoulder.
Crikey.

The path steepens and I get into a bit of a stride, Grouse comes passed me and we nod a greeting. Up onto the first part of the mud and grass and the guys in front of me begin to walk. On my recce a week ago I was able to run this quite happily. What's going on that I am now reduced to walking as well?! Walk/run up to the gate where Charlie was standing, (looking very dapper with an umbrella), left up the hill, and again, more walking.
I put in a burst and overtook 3 guys, including Steve in a GDH vest, and then try to keep up with Grouse as we alternately walk and run up the remainder of the hill.

A glorious picture of me at my best. Thanks ShaunP

Hit the top of the section, and julien is in front of us, we give chase up and over the bomb-holed grassy field, over the stile- with someone else in close pursuit. Legs feeling a bit better now, round the high point, with Neil Shuttleworth encouraging us on from the sidelines, and plunge down the first descent. Grouse catches Julien up fast, but I take my time, taking a different line over the stream, to stay in touch with him. Over a stile and into the heather.

Halfway through there is a section where you can end up in a marshy bit if you're not careful, I skirt round it and Grouse goes through it, enabling me to get round and in front of him. Down, through a stile and down the steep slippy hill. The next stile is horrible, especially if approached directly perpendicular to it, I carve out left and circle in to take it at an angle instead of having to slow too much, up, ove... Foot catches in the wire on the top.
Bugger.
Topple forward, but manage to release my foot, scrabble for some kind of balance and realise I'm losing it. Tuck, roll, up and keep running, with grouse saying 'can ye do that again, I missed it'.
We pass Ian marshaling at the corner (credit goes to him for the photo), and Grouse passes me on the path. Over the fields, and he's making good his escape and I know someone else is breathing down my neck. Through bog, mud and a couple of gates, right, through the archway of trees to the bottom of the final hill, trying desperately not to blow my legs up before getting to it.
Up through a quagmire which breaks my stride and I end up walking where I was happily jogging last week. Again. A guy in green shorts overtakes, I try and keep up with him, turning the legs over, yet he gets further away. I figure I'm doing damage to whoever is behind me, but have to drop to a walk.
Julien comes past me. Its inspiring when someone theoretically old enough to be your dad, with a fractured bone in his arm, cruises along by as you're struggling up a hill.

Beryl, marshalling and enjoying the April weather. Thanks again ShaunP

If he can do it. So can I. Back to a jog, and then through the gate. He takes more of a lead and I concentrate on trying to keep the guy behind me, behind me. I can hear rasping breaths, and it sounds like Matt. Just need to keep in front up here and I'll have him on the down hills anyway. Legs. Legs. Legs. Pain and tiredness, but Beryl and Carl are at the top, shouting encouragement to everyone. I try to run the last few steps to the top, and a glance under my arm confirms someone breathing down my neck. But its not Matt. Someone else- an unknown quantity on descents- just go for it then.
Julien is in front, but not desperately far away, catchable as he is 'taking it easy' Grouse is a long way ahead, catchable only if he makes a mistake. Unlikely.

Plunge down the hill, brain off, brakes off, I must be stretching out on the guy behind me, but never bother checking. Over a stile, down a field, jump off the next one, down through heather and catch Julien as we hit the final stretch of road. (The mantra being muttered by both of us now being "Don't fall. Don't fall")

I hammer home, never looking back, but striding out as much as I can, coming in at 28:59, 20th place. 11 better than last year and a minute and a half cut off my time. Nice.
I'm happy with that!
Looking at splits, I was faster in every part of the race in comparison to last year, excellent. Not quite there yet, still a long way to go. But progress has been made.


Apologies for the lack of photos, Lynne and I were both running and didn't really have much of a chance to take any. There were a few guys out there on the course, so as and when I can blag a couple more, they will be posted.

Trigger Point Therapy roller - The Grid - Review

As you may or may not know, I am a fan of foamrollers - for self massage and myo-fascial release. We own a fair few, ranging from the soft to the ridiculously hard.

One of the main players out there on the running and triathlon scene is “Trigger Point Therapy" range which creates not only Foam Rollers, but also other things like a Massage Ball, and some other things called Quadballers and Footballers.

The Trigger Point Foam roller is called The Grid. It is made of a piece of tube (much like a 4inch drainpipe), and covered with a foam rubber like material, which has a number of ridges and bumps on which are meant to feel like a massage therapists fingers, elbows or the flat of the palm- depending on which surface you use.

Interesting.

It is retailing for about £45 or so in the UK (depending on where you buy it from)

Is it any better or any worse than any of the other rollers on the market?

I published my first thoughts on the roller a few months ago, but really wanted to give it a bit of time before giving any solid thoughts on it and how much I have actually used it.

Do the Nobbles and Bobbles work?

The Bobbles and Nobbles.

Once I got it out of the box, and begin to roll on it, it was evident it was a foam roller. 

Not much more, not much less. As advertised, it has a number of little bobbles and nobbles in it, which, as mentioned above are meant to mimic various types of strokes and parts of a massage therapists tools. To begin with I tried experimenting with the different surfaces, trying to find whether it made all that much of a difference or not.

The short answer is no, I don’t think it does.

When rolling down a hamstring or a quad, the length of the muscle is such that you use the entire roller. If you wish to precisely target a particular area of the muscle with a particular part of the pattern you can, but it just isn’t worth it.

Smaller muscles, again, the patterns, although they look pretty, I found no benefit in using the flat bit or the bobbly bit. So the nitty gritty bits- not all that fantastic.

What does it feel like in general?

It is actually quite a nice roller. Not too hard or soft. The hard internal tube covered with soft external foam rubber is good in design terms, because over a long period of use, even if the foam rubber does start getting softer, the roller with retain its rigidity. (A problem with other rollers which are uniformly one material throughout tend to get softer over time with a lot of use).

It is light and wieldy, and despite the reservations I had about its size- being a bit smaller than any other rollers I have had and used in the past, I was surprised and pleased that it was so good. 

Ok, so it is not quite as versatile as a 40 or 50cm long roller, but for the vast majority of things, it works just fine. The compact size, and the fact it is hollow make it pretty useful for travelling with as well. Another plus.

Over the past 3 months it has been the most used roller in the house.

Why is this?

Partially because I wanted to test it, but also, partially because it looks like a toy. It doesn’t have the forbidding quality of the black polystyrene roller of death, nor is it small like the white closed cell foam roller that we first bought. Its more like a Fischer Price toy, more like an Executive Desk Amusement Time Killer than something you use to keep soft tissue healthy. It is that almost psychological advantage of a well presented piece of kit over a tube of foam which makes you want to use it as you walk through a room.

Is it any better at what a foam roller is meant to do?

No. Not really. One foam roller is much the same as another. The hardness, length and diameter of the roller is pretty much dependent on which one you buy. The patterned effect on the Grid, to me, is pretty much a non-starter, so in terms of buying a roller, if you want something that is effective, you really really don’t have to spend anything like this kind of money on one. 

Back when I first got it, I was wondering if it occupied its own niche in terms of hardness/squidginess, or if it would double up as a partially soft, partially hard roller for all occasions. 

I do use it more, but mostly because I barely use the soft roller anymore, it's like I have grown out of it.  TP roller is a good replacement for it without being too hard. I'm looking for excuses to say that I would use it less, but to be honest, it is now the most used roller in the house. 

If you are a little on the roller-shy side, or just have one sitting in the corner which you occasionally look at and think- "yup- that’s a foam roller", maybe- just maybe, spending some more cash on an expensive one might guilt trip you into using it. Maybe the fact it looks kind of cool might make you use it more. If that is the only reason you buy it- then yes, it is worth the money. 

A foam roller that is used is much better than one sitting in the corner, no matter how much you may or may not have spent.

Conclusion

Although this is a very used piece of equipment, I suspect it may be simply because it is the newest, and therefore, least beaten up roller in the house. I don't know if it will get tired and rubbish in the long term, but looking at the construction, I suppose not.  I am wondering if it would be possible to make one with a piece of drainpipe, an old foam camping mat and some superglue, but have not yet started experimenting. 

All in all, its a good bit of kit, well made, well used, but if you are motivated to use a roller no matter what you spend and no matter what it looks like, to be honest, I still wouldn’t spend more than £20 on one.

Suunto Ambit- thoughts on a new watch

Ambit box

Ok, so its a new watch, new tech, and has lots of interesting and exciting features, but there are also a couple of things that it DOESN'T do yet.
I've used the Ambit for a couple of runs now, downloaded it and played around a little, and here are my current thoughts as to Good things and Things I'm surprised it doesn't do. 

I have already passed these comments onto Suunto, and of course they have been "passed on to the relevant team for further processing", which probably means they have been passed onto the waste-paper-bin-shaped file on the desktop.
We shall see.

Good things
Aside from the obvious- its a GPS watch in the shape and size of a "normal" watch (well... a suunto sized watch) with a barometer in it that does everything a Suunto Core does, what else is good about this watch?

When I bought it I wasn't sure if it was going to be able to pair with an old HR monitor that came with a Suunto T4c.
It does. Yay.

It also has a 24 hour barometric trend view. Just like the Core. yay.

It locks onto satellites very quickly indeed. Much faster than any of the Garmins I own, and seems to have just as accurate tracking as them. (and MORE accurate than some other garmins I have known and used).

The amount of data you can view while running is phenomenal- though to be honest, I don't tend to look at the data when Im running. I just run.

Comparison of size Suunto Core, Suunto Ambit, Garmin 305

I like the lock feature when I'm running- flipping heck, if I had a quid for every time I've been for a run and pressed the stop button as I've got something out of my bag, I'd probably have about £20.

It will apparently synch up to our suunto bike pod as well, which is good. The reason I say apparently is because I haven't had a chance to check it out yet. The pod is in a drawer somewhere and is in dire need of a new battery.

Things I am surprised it doesn't do
Despite being able to change what you can see on your watch when you run, the information the watch gives you once you press stop and save is not changable. This is annoying- all that excellent information that I was just able to look at- now I can't see it until I get home and upload it to my computer. If I can edit the screens for when I am running, why can't I have some control over the information I see once I'm finished?!

Comparison of widths- Garmin 305, Suunto Ambit, Suunto Core

When you finish and save what you have just done, only the most recently recorded data is available to see on the watch. You can't go back to look at another track you have done in the past. It seems only possible to do that once you have uploaded onto a computer.
This is slightly concerning, if I go for a weeks running holiday, I'm not sure how much of my weeks running will be saved... will it all be saved for download when I get back, or will some of it be deleted to save more recent runs? Does that mean I have to take a computer with me on every holiday where I intend on using the Ambit?!

It doesn't do multisport- so those of you into tri's and adventure races- you can only record one activity at a time- and then at the end, you won't be able to view it all as one race- you will only see the last section that you recorded, be it the run section or mountainbike- or whatever until you upload to a computer... which seems odd to me.

In Movescout there are a multitude of things to look at, but one of the reasons I bought the ambit was because it gives good ascent data... what is missing from the summaries? The ability to look at ascent speeds in specific sections of your run/walk/cycle. Yes, you can see it on a graph, but I'd prefer it if it was data mined and actually written down, like they have with general ascent, decent, avg speed, top speed, avg HR etc. I'm sure it would be easy to do, if you had access to the actual backroom data.

I'm also surprised there is no functionalilty to change file types to gpx or kml files. I have since found a somewhat round about way of doing it, and have been assured that this is indeed in the pipeline for the Suunto site (though being in the planning phase and actually getting it done are 2 very different things). The way in which I did it was to use Neotrack to convert the Ambit track to GPX and then GPS visualiser to go from GPX to .kml. From what I can see on Google earth, it seems to have worked, mostly.

Doesn't matter what you buy, the cat will still make a nest in the wrapping.

Despite this list of things the Ambit doesn't do (yet) I am still very very very happy with it indeed.