BUCS: The revenge of the cross country

5000m goal : 15:50

5000m PB : 16:29.9

5k SB (post-Sept 2011) : 17:03 (xc split)

Two years ago I was at the pinnacle of my athletics career (of the time).  Training alongside the mighty Steven Bayton under the impressive coaching of Coach ‘Hannah’ Mitchell, had seen me shatter my PBs in to fragments I could only dream of as I tried to (unsuccessfully) knock out 400 reps in under 80 seconds a piece the previous summer.

It was all set up for the main event, the BUCS Cross County Champs up in Stirling that year.  Buoyed by the event not being snowed off, I confidently engaged in a one pint wager with my arch nemesis, on the criteria of who finished first.  Little did I know that this was to be the stage which would be the first of a dozen consecutive defeats to the rapidly improving man from Halifax.  My race lacked urgency, I started off in an energy preservation mode and found myself near the back, and it was only half way through that the frustrated shouts of my coaching support team hit me.  No amount of ‘cutting up the inside’ could muster me a finish higher than 147^th.

Now, two years on, I am eligible to run in BUCS again as I represent the 2^nd finest educational institute in central Birmingham.  These XC Championships, this coming weekend, are an early morning train ride to Cardiff away, and are the venue for my post-injury return to student competition.  Recent training sessions suggest that I’m nearing my peak of fitness again, in particular after lowering my ‘asleep to bathroom’ PB to 25.4 seconds in the 8m event mid-last night.

A top 100 finish is surely the target, and I am wiser from lessons learnt in cross countries over the last 24 months.  These include, start fast, tread tentatively through muddy ditches, and don’t ponder whether you need to buy milk on the way home at crucial moments in the race. 

  

Top uni for architecture I’ll have you know…

Top Drawer Encouragement

5000m goal : 15:50

5000m PB : 16:29.9

5k SB (post-Sept 2011) : 17:03 (xc split)

Halfway into the third mesocycle (or is it microcycle – I still don’t know) and I can thank my Steven Bayton augmented training programme for the misery of last night.  On an icy track with the company of a training partner, I bashed out a miserable session that could double as an initiation to hell.

Still the delights of today’s rest day mean that a trip to the shops brings home lots of goodies to tuck into, allowing me to gorge on biscuits, cake and other delightful snacks which I am religiously abstain from for rest of the week.  (I’m holding the Weeto and biscuit stash for a friend).

See all of these belong to Ally [pictured].

I’d like to make a special mention of Chief Movement Coach and Head Motivator Nick ‘Nandos’ Howard.  I don’t know where I would be without this maestro of entertainment.  Several weeks ago he told me I needed to do more drills to enable greater muscle activation.  In a different sentence he told me about some drills he thought would help augment my mobility.  “Don’t do those ones they’re shit,” he told me when I excitedly told him that I had completed them twice this week.  This was in the same phone call that he told me that my 10k PB-pace (garmin-measured) cross country was probably calculated wrong, and I later got a text asking “are you sure you timed it right?” to news of my impressive average from my 6x1000m (2mins) session.  His top drawer encouragement is what keeps me going. 

Still, it has to be speculated that a 5k season’s best split from Saturday’s 8.2km cross country course is indeed a step in the right direction.  Its not a house lead of course, due to a technicality that seems to mean that my times don’t supersede Ally’s.  But exciting news from the IAAF this morning means that my triple jump lead of 1.16m will ‘probably’ be post-ratified for the powerof10 based on available video evidence.

Breakfast bowl musings

5000m goal : 15:50

5000m PB : 16:29.9

5k SB (post-Sept 2011) : 17:36

There are few things I dislike more than someone using my breakfast bowl, but cross county isn’t one of them.  I love cross county.  Not in the minutes before the start, or during.  In those moments cross county and I merely tolerate each other with a mutual distain.  But I get a primal satisfaction from swaggering past people (not actually swaggering) up hills, and chalking off the blades of grass one after another.

This weekend saw me not only make my county championship debut, but also record my highest ever county championships finish.  A majestic six miles on a mild Solihull course saw me finish the 21^st loser in a performance that I can take enough encouragement from to suggest that I am nearing full fitness.  And while they will rightly claim that they have had better days, I take much satisfaction from finishing sandwiched (not literally) between two of BRAT Club’s finest disciples.

Despite me still not having my name to any distance running house leads yet, mainly because I am not yet brave enough to show myself on an accurately measured course, I still retain my 1m16 house triple jump lead, which has somehow survived the onslaught from housemates reenergised after their latest pregnancy scare.  It turned out that Ally was simply wearing a few more layers than he remembered Alison dressing him in.

Lazy Architecture

In the last day or so the ‘3D Athletics Track’ in Alicante, Spain track seems to have reared its head again on the social media-sphere.  The image of a track with a bump in it, which caused me mild annoyance earlier this year is being touted as inspirational genius.  To you I call it lazy architecture.

Designed as a novelty by Subarquitectura Architects, I believe that this overpriced $2m venture completely misses the point not only of athletics, but also of design, proven by their own words in stating their inspiration: “Designing an athletic track could get you as bored as when you are running on it: curve, straight, curve, straight, again and again.”  Additionally these comments serve to diminish running by suggesting that it’s dull and needs token gestures to increase interest.  Anyone involved with the sport will tell you that this is not necessary. 

[Aerial view of the ‘3D Athletics Track’, Spain.]

An athletics track has but a few principles to adhered to: it should be a circular, measured distance, flat, and feature an impact-absorbing surface.  Subarquitectura, however, refer to your standard athletics arena as being “…without any fissure to let your imagination soar.”  But really it is they that are guilty of this, with a piece of very lazy design.  At first glance it’s momentarily exciting, but it could be so much more.

The separation of the lanes into five orthodox, and five providing a 25 metre hill, is in concept fine, but is a starting point if you want to create a space which is both aesthetically novel and functional, something which has not been achieved here.  I can’t perform my 400m repeats using this bump, or knock out  some mile reps, and the undulation isn’t long enough or frequent enough to make it a useful hill session or provide a challenging threshold run. 

The architects have missed an opportunity to expand their concept and should have designed say four or five of these mounds of varying gradients or lengths.  Next perhaps they could maybe have explored a different surface more suitable to the application they are trying to achieve; grass for example, with a reinforced foundation to prevent wearing of the surface through constant use and allow better cushioning for athlete’s joints.  Finally, this would provide an opportunity to link with the ample grounds of this sports facility to expand into more potential routes for runners.

[Conceptual sketch showing how the design could easily and usefully be expanded.]

This space would provide a mixture of a useful orthodox track, encased by an undulating and varying terrain: a true multi-purpose track to run round, which links with the surrounding landscape and draws nature into the arena, creating both a useful and novel space to train in. 

Oh and finally, a message to those architects who still seem to refuse to consider designing using trees: the wind is a cruel mistress which we weary runners like to hide from if it’s not too much trouble!