Category: Running

The super start to 2016 continued in a busy February with more big race attendances, the club presentation night and a brand new Cwm Ogwr event. Zero to Hero continues to inspire us all with new members joining almost every week as well as importantly, people returning for more. Several have already completed a parkrun whilst it’s been an avenue for others who were already at a 5K level to advance to 10K and Half Marathons with many having dates in their dairies for their first big events.

The clubs new event, plus the Margam Trail Half Marathon during the month meant Richard’s trail sessions were limited but around a dozen went down to Ogmore-by-Sea on the first Sunday of the month to run from the finish line of the upcoming Vale Ultra for 45 minutes doing the reverse of the route before heading back. Probably the windiest conditions any of us have run in made it a challenging run and when parts of the course go within a few feet of cliff edges, it can be a bit scary (especially if like me, you don’t like heights). Still an enjoyable run and invaluable experience for those doing the 18 or 32 mile run on April 2.

 

Saturday 6 – parkruns

 

The first parkruns of the month seen significantly reduced overall attendances due to cold, wet, windy conditions. Of course, Cwm Ogwr aren’t bothered by this and we actually had a record attendance with 32 runners across 3 parkruns. 27 of those were at Porthcawl where Chris Pratt and I set seasons bests with 21:01 and 21:05 respectively. Kelly ran her first parkrun of the year with a sub 25 clocking. Nick ran 20 miles before parkrun but still managed a 23:00. Shawn Cullen, Julie Ransom and Lynda Denholm all ran their first parkruns as part of Cwm Ogwr whilst there were a further four Zero to Hero regulars in attendance.

 

Away from Porthcawl, my January Runner of the Month, Helen LJ was running at Swansea Bay parkrun and got another best time since joining the club. Over a minute quicker than the time she had set 3 weeks earlier making it her fastest parkrun time since December 2012. Over in Pontypridd, Neil Jones and Chris Williams ran 19 miles before running Pontypridd parkrun which Neil ran in 21:29 which he noted was a fast enough pace for a sub 3 hour marathon time. Neil Harris and Fiona Drysdale also ran at Pontypridd.

 

Saturday 13 – parkruns

 

27 runners across 3 different parkruns. Chris Pratt, Aled, Nick and I were joined by Jamie from Bridgend AC to do the Barry Island parkrun and then do a recce run of the Vale Ultra course from Barry to Llantwit. Neil Jones paced at Pontypridd with Fiona Drysdale also running there. At Porthcawl there were some excellent PB’s from Stephen, Jayne, Helen LJ and Rhiannon Buckley.

 

Sunday 14 – Beast 10K

 

Setting up a trail run has been on the clubs ‘to do’ list for a while but was fraught with issues – land owners permission, accurate measurements, health and safety, marking out the course, enough volunteers, closed gates, livestock – the list goes on. However, Kelly had an great idea to overcome a lot of these – make it a free run for affiliated club members only. That way everyone is insured through their Welsh Athletics membership and the fact that it’s free means the pressures off with regards to ensuring a super accurate course measurement and having it under strict race conditions.

 

Our toughest training run, The Beast was chosen as the route which conveniently if starting at the bottom of the hill was a close as you could get to 10K bearing in mind that most trail / off road races are expected to be slightly out. Permission was granted from the land owners who ensured the gates were open and livestock not on the course. An appeal for volunteers on our Facebook page had an amazing response with more than enough putting themselves forward within a couple of hours of it being posted. Kelly then went about advertising the runs to other clubs and had a fantastic response with runners from all over South Wales wanting to give it a go.

 

The event day arrived with great weather conditions – cold but sunny and clear – perfect for taking in some of the beautiful scenery on the route. Around 20 odd volunteers met at the Life Centre at 9am with many of them having 4-6 mile round trips to get to their marshalling point or the water station which was at the top of the Beast. Others stayed at the Life Centre to help with parking whilst I ‘checked in’ the runners on Kelly’s i-pad. Some looked a little worried about what was to come having seen the video of the route that Chris Pratt had uploaded of Kelly’s recce run, plus the Facebook event page had the elevation profile staring at runners when they visited the page.

 

An amazing turnout of 96 runners despite the fact there was a Gwent League fixture the day before and Wales playing in the Six Nations.. oh, and it was Valentines Day. Apart from some bonkers fell races, I can’t think of another run that starts with a mile or so steep climb which awaited the runners but everyone attacked it whilst I warned a few around me that this was just the warm up to the ‘Beast’. Eamonn Kirk of Swansea Harriers made history by becoming the first Beast 10K winner having already won the first Cwm Ogwr 5 miler after the club resurrected the event in 2013. In fact, he won the inaugural Beast 10K by a huge margin of over 3 minutes in a time of 40:33. The female winner won by an even bigger margin with Angela Jones of Fairwater Runners finishing in 48:03 for 8 overall and over 4 minutes ahead of the next female finisher.

 

A few Cwm Ogwr runners were also given the option to run after all volunteering roles were filled and Niki Puleio finished 4 overall in a club record time on the course of 46:28. New member, Chris Thomas was the next Cwm Ogwr finisher in 23 place whilst I finished soon after in 25 with Keith Coleman in 37 despite only finishing a minute or so after me. Mark Worrall, Ann Davies, Caerwyn, Natalie, Kelly G, Stephen, Lucy H, Amanda P and Rachel A made up the remaining Cwm Ogwr finishers, most of which were running the Beast for the first time.

 

Everyone headed back to the Life Centre afterwards where Jo Pickup was selling cakes, quiches (made by herself and other Cwm Ogwr runners) and hot drinks which went down very well with runners and particularly those that had marshalled and had been outside in the cold for close to 3 hours.

 

The event page was full of positive comments and there’s no doubt in my mind that it could be even bigger next year. Some excellent photo’s with professional photographer Andrew Davis volunteering his time to capture the runners approaching the top of the Beast section whilst KXT photography were also in attendance as well as Nick Harris and Chris Pratt taking photos. With a couple of supporters from other clubs taking photo’s plus a few from marshals smartphones, I think we might have more photographs per runner than any race in Britain!

 

A huge success and flawlessly organised. A massive thanks to every single person who helped out.

 

Saturday 20 – parkruns

 

A club record 35 runners at Porthcawl which included our Pontypridd parkrunners Neil J, Neil H and Chris W joining us for the first time. Neil J and Chris clocked up over 20 miles in doing so whilst a few others also ran down to parkrun as part of half / full or Ultra marathon training. This parkrunday seen a few more of the Zero to Hero’s complete their first 5K only 5 weeks after starting this years program. Another load of PB’s with this weeks list including Mark Worrall, Claire Dunbar-Bowen, Jayne, Kelly G, Sarah Littlewood and Tammie Clement. Richard LJ was our only tourist as he tried out Grangemoor parkrun.

 

Sunday 21 – Margam Trail ‘Half Marathon’, Neath 10 miler and Beach Party 10K

 

A huge turnout of 28 runners for the inaugural Margam Trail Half Marathon. Unfortunately the event didn’t quite go to plan with the main issue being it was around 11 miles instead of 13.1. Aled lead the Cwm Ogwr runners in on the challenging course in cold, misty conditions and despite the issues, I think a few would be keen to give it another go. Certainly not speaking for everyone on that though. Interestingly Run Britain Rankings at the time of typing this, have the event down as a proper half marathon and have assigned PB’s to those who ran it faster than a previous best half marathon time which really messes up the system – although there’s lots who argue there are several flaws in the Run Britain handicap / rankings system anyway.

 

The Neath 10 miler went much more smoothly although there were a few comments about the course being slightly long but we’re talking 0.1 out rather than a huge margin. Despite that Niki Puleio set a new club record with a time of 1:07:01. Nick finished 5 minutes behind him and missed out on a PB by a couple of minutes, however, he has been doing some record high mileage weeks lately as well. Finally, David Kembery smashed his 10 mile PB with a 1:14:58 which was also an age category club record.

 

Meanwhile, a few thousand miles away, Kelly Owen was running a 10K along the seafront in sunny California with a decent time of 52:32 considering the high temperatures despite an early morning start. It was Kelly’s third running event in the US over the past couple of years having already done the Empire State Run and a parkrun in Florida.

 

Saturday 27 – parkruns and Ras Dewi Sant Marathon

 

A rare week with only runners at Porthcawl of which there were 24. I ran with the twins in their heavy non-running buggy which was a challenge. There were more members who ran down to get some extra training miles in, and couple of PB’s. Firstly Niki Puleio followed up his 10 mile club record with a 19:04 PB which puts him second only to Neil Jones in the 5K rankings whilst the other PB was for Phillip Buckley.

 

Current Runners Runner of the Year Chris Pratt set his sights on doing 6 marathons this year with Ras Dewi Sant pencilled in as the first on the list. However, this list was prior to ‘the fall’ which meant he didn’t start training until just 6-7 weeks before the marathon. Fortunately he was able to get back into it straight away and within a couple of weeks was doing record high mileage weeks and is often the only person in the club to go to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday sessions although there are occasionally others. The Vale recce runs provided a couple of long distance training runs and it was decided that Ras Dewi Sant would indeed be the first marathon of the year for Chris, and any club member for that matter. He finished in a fantastic time of 4:42 considering the very challenging hilly, off road terrain. Chris has wrote a blog post about the race at http://chrispratt24.tumblr.com/ which is a detailed account of what is one of the toughest marathons in Wales if not the UK.

 

Sunday 28 – St Davids 10K

 

This race was a great example of how much the club has grown as out of the 25 Cwm Ogwr runners, 24 of them had joined the club in the past 12 months. There were even a few who’ve only joined us in the past two months and have already gone from Zero to 10K. Christie Coleman actually decided to run the 5K event which started an hour before the main 10K event as well and already looks on course to top this years ‘most events’ table. Could my record 101 events in one year even be under threat!? Anyway, back to the race and I’m not sure we’ve ever had such a high percentage of PB’s for a race with over 20 members running. The PB list included Stephen, Caerwyn, Shelley (with an age category club record), Emma, Mark, Ann, Lucy H, Jayne, Jo, Kelly G, Kimberly, Helen LJ, Tammie, Alana and Rhiannon Buckley.

 

Chairman’s Runner of the Month – Niki Puleio

 

An amazing month for Niki which included new PB’s at 5K and 10 mile – the latter also being a club record. He was also 4th overall in the inaugural Beast 10K. Well done Niki.

 

The Presentation Night

 

The first Sunday of February seen the running clubs third annual presentation night. Organised by David and Jayne Kembery with a little help from others, it was a huge success with a big turnout and everyone having a great night. A massive thanks to the Kembery’s who we will no doubt be asking to do it all again in 12 months time.

 

The list of winners were as follows…

 

Runners Runner of the Year: Chris Pratt

Male Club Championship Winner: Nick Harris

Female Club Championship Winner: Liz Davis

Most Improved Runner: Christie Coleman

Best Newcomer: Alica Thomas

Kelly’s Kindness Award: Antony Lewis

Coach of the Year: Kevin Archie Raymond

Best Senior Male: Neil Jones

Best Senior Female: Amy Roberts

Best Veteran Male: Kevin Archie Raymond

Best Veteran Female: Kelly Owen

Club Person of the Year: David Kembery

Zero to Hero award: Jayne Kembery Tunster

Best Volunteer: Maria Lalic

Trail-Blazer award: Richard Lowcock James

Best comeback of 2015: Brian Cotton

Most PBs in 2015: Chris Pratt

Most parkruns in 2015: Gareth Jenkins

Best Supporters: Denise Bradley and Dai Power

Club Appreciation Award: Andrew Davis

Best Fall during a Training Run: Chris Pratt

Best Fall during a Trail Run: Heather Garratt

Best Fall during a Race: Chris Roberts

Best Bromance: Chris Pratt and Gareth Jenkins

The Ar$eh0le award: Aled Hughes (third year in a row)

Kelly Owen was also presented with a cookbook and a vase as a thank you for all her hard work and starting the club in the first place.

Rhiannon Buckley was finally presented with her goodie bag and medal for winning the Festive Four competition.

 

Looking ahead

 

March is a key month for many of our members doing longer distances. Newport, Merthyr, Llanelli and Cardiff World Half Marathons will all have Cwm Ogwr members participating whilst others will be doing their longest training runs ready for April Marathons or the Vale Ultra. Plus Zero to Hero will see many runners doing their furthest distances ever whether it’s 5K, 5 miles or much more.

How do you follow up the amazing year we had in 2015? Well we’ve had a pretty good start to say the least. An incredible turnout at Kenfig, Riverbank Rollick and Lliswerry, 20+ signing up for Snowdonia Marathon 2016, the big parkrun attendances continuing and a new huge batch of victims, I mean runners at Zero to Hero. I’ll also share the running goals of those who dared to share as well as a look ahead to the rest of the year.

 

January 2016 – a month that will hopefully be the start of a long and happy running journey for the amazing runners who have turned up to the new Zero to Hero sessions and Wednesday sessions which also cater for all abilities. I believe we’ve seen well over 30 if not 40 new faces this month and record attendances at Sunday and Wednesday session. Including the ones turning up to do miles, Richards trail sessions, races and others doing their own training runs, there have probably been over 50 people running on Sunday mornings throughout January. Awesome.

 

Friday 1 – Kenfig Prince of Wales 4 miler and parkruns

 

New Year’s Day is the only opportunity to get two official parkruns recorded so it’ll come as no surprise that Nick and myself decided to add to our totals whilst Martin Beard who had done two Australian parkruns over Christmas joined us for the two as well. Chris Pratt came along to support still recovering from the fall prior to Christmas. Cardiff parkrun up first where we met up with Neil Jones, Neil Harris and Dave Evans. Dave was going on to do the Kenfig run later rather than a second parkrun. No PB’s to be had as most of us took it easy after a slow first kilometre due to the crowds and Neil Harris was very pleased to sneak in front of Neil Jones on the line for the first time ever.

 

The second parkrun was at Barry Island where they had a record crowd and Cardiff runner Sally Wilder was announced as running her 250 parkrun. It’ll be mid-2017 at earliest by the time any current Cwm Ogwr runner reaches that milestone. Cold and windy conditions down on the seafront. The later start time meant there were a few more dog walkers to contend with but all went smoothly in the end.

 

Just as we would have been finishing our second event of 2016, the blue wave descended on Kenfig for a long running annual New Year’s Day race starting at the Prince of Wales pub. I did it back in 2014 with Nick and Dai Cappell and the two of them were the only Cwm Ogwr runners last year. I’d heard a few more were doing it this year but was amazed when I seen the results and seen 33 Cwm Ogwr runners on there!  Richie Pett lead the way with Rhiannon Buckley our final finisher. However, it wasn’t the position that mattered for Rhiannon, it was the time. She was in contention to win the Festive Four competition where one of the scoring systems was based on seasons best times against times ran in the Festive Four races. Later that evening it was confirmed… Rhiannon Buckley won the Festive Four! Amazing achievement considering she only started running a couple of months ago and well deserved for her determination and willingness to give seemingly any race a go.

 

Saturday 2 – more parkruns

 

Something weird is going on… Aled is turning up for parkruns including volunteering during January. The person who replies to any Facebook post about parkrun with ‘what’s parkrun’ seems to have caught the bug. Maybe it’s the competition with Richie Pett and Brian Cotton, maybe it’s pushing some of our other runners, maybe it’s the tea and toast in Pietro’s afterwards… whatever it is, the blue wave has yet another regular parkrunner.

 

The first Porthcawl parkrun of the year seen 19 runners with almost all having run the day before. No PB’s to be had but our new parkrun fan Aled clocked a 20:49 – his fastest 5K time in over 2 years. Cwm Ogwr were also represented at the Gnoll with Sian Tossell and Helen LJ putting their first 5K times of the year on the board.

 

Saturday 9 – even more parkruns

 

Twenty five Cwm Ogwr parkrunners this week with 21 at Porthcawl and 4 at the Gnoll. Liz and I were the first of what I imagine will be many to combine parkrun with their long training run. Dave Evans volunteered to pace 22:30 whilst Chris Roberts and Maria volunteered on non-running roles. No PB’s but of course lots of SB’s (season’s bests) with it being so early in the year. Niki Puleio put a marker down with the first sub 20 time of the year with a 19:33 which was good enough for 5 overall. He was actually a bit disappointed as he was in 3 approaching the final straight which would have been Cwm Ogwr’s first top 3 parkrun finish at Porthcawl. Fiona set the fastest female members time of the year with 26:18.

 

Richard LJ, Chris Pratt, Steve and Denise attended the Gnoll parkrun where there was a special memorial run for Dan Tomlinson – a promising young runner who tragically died last month. There was a record turnout with clubs from all over South Wales coming together in support.

 

Sunday 10 – West Glam XC League – Margam Reservoir

 

Christie and I went along to this with Sian Tossell and Christie’s wife Tracey supporting. An odd Cross Country fixture given it was an entirely tarmac course with two laps of the reservoir and a rough distance of 5.6 miles in total. A bumper turnout with over 300 runners meant they decided to set the women off first and the men 10 minutes later to avoid congestion. A cold, drizzly morning and the reservoir is exposed to the wind but all in all, not bad conditions. The only XC element of the course was a massive unavoidable puddle towards the end of each lap so plenty of soggy trainers on show at the end. Obviously a super flat course and only £2 to enter so hopefully this might be one of the races I’m talking about next year and saying ‘30 odd turned up when there was only 2 last year’.

 

Saturday 16 – parkruns

 

Twenty-two at Porthcawl with Dai Power at Gnoll and Fiona Drysdale at Newport. 14 seasons bests at Porthcawl but the stand out performances were Shelley and Helen LJ. I ended up pacing Shelley who had a previous best of 24:44 which she smashed with a 23:17 which is the fastest time by any Cwm Ogwr female for several months. Helen LJ clocked 34:53 which was her fastest parkrun time since December 2012.

 

Sunday 17 – Riverbank Rollick and Bath Skyline 10K

 

Another race – another huge increase in Cwm Ogwr members. Last year just Richard LJ and I ran the Riverbank Rollick. After much persuasion by Richard as well as the success of his trail runs, there were 15 this year. Richard LJ was running it for what I believe is the 3 year in a row, whilst all of the others are trying it for the first time. Richard confirmed this year was even worse conditions than the previous years which made for a tough race. Niki Puleio ran an impressive 1:11 with Richie Pett second and Aled third Cwm Ogwr member across the line. Post race comments ranged from ‘great fun’ to ‘never again’.

 

Elsewhere Martin Beard and his wife Betty were running the Bath Skyline 10K having signed up for the series of 10K races.

 

Saturday 23 – parkruns

 

A bumper 27 Cwm Ogwr runners across 4 different parkruns. Starting at Porthcawl, Niki Puleio lead home the 23 Cwm Ogwr runners in attendance with a new PB and club best for 2016 of 19:13. Brian Cotton got a PB going sub 21 for the first time with a 20:58 whilst Shelley got her second PB in two weeks finishing a second quicker to improve the best female club time of the year to 23:16. This also puts her as joint 4 fastest female for 5K in the club. Jayne Kembery knocked a massive 40 seconds off her parkrun time having come close the previous couple of weeks. Kimberly Davies also got a PB paced by Porthcawl runner Angela Walsh. Christie narrowly missed out on joining in with the PB’s by just 2 seconds.

 

Chris Pratt and I attended Grangemoor parkrun which we did before running the first 10 miles of the Vale Ultra course. Sian Tossell ensured we still had representation at Gnoll whilst Ann was back at her regular parkrun of Colby.

 

Saturday 30 – parkruns

 

This week there were 22 runners across 5 different parkruns. The only PB was Lucy Hancock at Cardiff parkrun whilst most of our runners were taking it easy before Sunday races. Neil Jones ran a seasons best at Pontypridd and lowered the club best time for 2016 to 19:03. Juliet Amner took in some parkrun tourism at Reigate Priory parkrun whilst Saul Harris was at Southampton parkrun which had the second biggest attendance in the UK with almost 800 runners.

 

Sunday 31 – Lliswerry 8, Margam XC and Winter Series London 10K

 

Last year at the Lliswerry 8 miler we had 8 runners.. this year.. 30! Some outstanding times including Neil Jones leading the Cwm Ogwr runners home and missing out on sub 50 by just 2 seconds for 42 place overall. Richie Pett beat Nick Harris to second and claimed bragging rights in the competition with Aled who was a couple of minutes further back. Brian Cotton also ran a great time that would have included his fastest mile, 5K and 10K! Heather Garratt was first Cwm Ogwr female over the line with Betty Lee who stepped in last minute second and Shelley third. Also worth noting it was the longest distance race completed by both Rhian Nolan and Helen LJ who both had excellent runs.

 

New members Phillip Buckley and Keith Coleman joined me, Nicola Prior, Kimberly and Pat for the Margam Park XC fixture with Sian Tossell running for Run for All having started the season for them, and Natalie in support on camera duties. Despite only about a third of the 4.5 mile course being on grass, we all got very muddy as one particular section was shin deep and as it was wet it flicked up covering legs, shorts and even vests. I lead the Cwm Ogwr runners home with Keith in second. Some strong finishes, particularly by Pat who we all stayed to cheer on as our final finisher.

 

Elsewhere Juliet Amner ran the Cancer Research Winter Series 10K in London in 54:15.

 

Chairman’s Runner of the Month – Helen Lowcock James

 

Hopefully I’m not giving away a big secret but Helen LJ signed up for the Cardiff World Half back in October / November when still running a maximum of 5K. It seemed an ambitious goal but Helen has really got stuck in getting up to 8 mile training runs and completing her longest race to date at the Lliswerry 8. The training also seems to be helping her 5K times as well with a quickest parkrun in over 3 years during a rare visit to Porthcawl from her new regular parkrun home at the Gnoll. The improvements made just over the past few weeks have helped put Helen as the current leader in the Level Playing Field Club Championship by quite a large margin having also ran a great time at Kenfig on New Years Day.  Inspirational.

 

Next up

 

February promises to be another great month for the club and kicks off on the first weekend with a massive celebration of what the club has achieved in the past year with the presentation night. We’ll also be hosting the inaugural Beast 10K and there’s more club championship points on offer with the inaugural Margam Trail HM and St Davids Day 10K. Exciting times.

Another amazing month for Cwm Ogwr runners with a huge turnout at the Pudding Run, lots signing up for the Festive Four competition and plans finalised for next years club championship.

 

Saturday 5th – parkruns and Run 4 All Santa Run

 

Cwm Ogwr represented at five different parkruns with 15 at Porthcawl, 4 at the Gnoll, 2 at Pontypridd, 1 at Colby and 1 at Conwy. Very windy conditions at most of them. Chris Roberts, Dai Power, Richard LJ and I were the four at the Gnoll where I finished in my highest parkrun position of 7th, Chris 13th, RLJ 17th and Dai 40th. Ann was at Colby where she finished just outside her course best. Chris Pratt was ready to complete his challenge of running all the Welsh parkruns that existed at the start of the year only for Penrhyn parkrun to be cancelled! Fortunately, Conwy parkrun which he hadn’t done before wasn’t too far away so he did that one instead finishing in 12th place.

 

Later in the day I discovered Neil Jones and Neil Harris had run Pontypridd parkrun. Neil Harris running an impressive 20:36. Neil Jones running 18:33!!! A massive 26 seconds knocked off his own club record and that equates to an average mile of 5:59. He was second in the parkrun which is also a record high finish for a Cwm Ogwr member.

 

The first Saturday of the month also seen the second annual Aberavon Santa Run hosted by Run 4 All. A great turnout with 15 Cwm Ogwr members in Santa suits including Juliet, Christie, Chris R, Brian and I all running our second 5K of the morning. The wind hadn’t died down and sand blew in from the beach stinging our faces on the way round. No PB’s to be had but Zero to Hero members Brett Bonnell and Tammie Clemment both ran their first 5K’s.

 

Sunday 6th – Vale of Clwyd Half Marathon and Bath Skyline 10K

 

Just a week after setting a half marathon PB at Downtown HM, Chris Pratt was at again knocking another minute off his time with a 1:37:46 at the Vale of Clwyd HM which also completed the challenge of running 15 halves in 2015.

 

Martin Beard and his wife Betty signed up for the Bath Skyline 10K series with this being the final one of the year. Martin finished in 56:06 whilst Betty was just over the hour mark,

 

Saturday 12th – parkruns and Welsh Inter Regional XC Championships

 

Smallest parkrun turnout in a long time with just 13 runners across 3 parkruns with Helen LJ at the Gnoll, Chris Pratt at Halifax and 11 runners at Porthcawl. Nick, Peter and I all volunteered at Porthcawl. Nick had also volunteered the week before therefore ending his streak of running parkrun with 58 weeks in a row. I made a rare non-pacing volunteering appearance due to the XC race later that day. Normally I’d of course do both but this XC event was a bigger deal than most. Chris Pratt’s run at Halifax was his 20th different parkrun which meant he joins the list on the ‘most events’ page of the parkrun UK website.

 

Later that day Kelly, Lorna, Neil J and I were representing South Wales in the Welsh Inter Regional Cross Country Championships which were being held at Builth Wells. Neil had been selected in the Male 35+ category based on his time at the recent Llandaff Fields XC. Kelly had expressed an interest to an e-mail sent out for Female 35+ runners and was selected, whilst myself and Lorna were last minute additions after discovering there were a couple of spaces that needed filling. OK, I was making up the numbers but who cares, I was representing my region and wearing a South Wales vest at a national competition!

 

The field was stacked with GB and Welsh internationals. Even those who hadn’t got to that level were some of the best age group cross country runners in Wales. Very worried I’d be dead last and probably lapped but in the end neither happened. Conditions were ‘character building’ as our captain would put it – howling gales and very muddy and wet underfoot. Several sections on each of the 3 laps involving running through ankle deep cold muddy water. Neil did awesome with a 42:01 time despite running in trail shoes. He was 6th in his age category and therefore counted towards the South Wales points total for his category which they won. A week later at parkrun, his South Wales team manager presented him with a gold medal for being part of the winning team! I finished in 47:15 with just 4 runners behind me. It was an awesome experience and I’ll definitely be hoping I can ‘make up the numbers’ again next year if there’s an chance.

 

The women’s field including twins Rhianwedd and Ffion Price – both GB internationals who have run at under 20 level in world cross country events as well as representing GB on the track. Kelly was running only her second XC event whilst it was a XC debut for Lorna. Both done brilliantly finishing in 32:09 and 33:48 respectively with few runners behind them and are both keen to be selected again next year.

 

Sunday 13th – Merthyr Mawr Pudding Run

 

Incredible turnout with 37 Cwm Ogwr runners with over half of those doing the race for the first time. For Rhiannon Buckley it was her first 10K just 2 months after starting as a complete beginner with Zero to Hero. For those not familiar with the race, it starts with the ‘Big Dipper’ sand dune – apparently the largest natural sand dune in Europe. A steep descent back down the other side and then onto Merthyr Mawr lane, through a muddy field, up ‘Golf Club’ hill, across the top of a muddy mountain, then a long descent including more mud, sand and rocky sections. Across to the sewerage works and back onto the sand dunes before a couple of stream crossings including one which was almost waist deep before finishing. The sort of run that when you explain the course to a non-runner they come to the conclusion you’re a bit mad.

 

Niki lead the Cwm Ogwr runners home in a blistering time of 44:43. The previous best on the course by a Cwm Ogwr member was around 4 minutes slower.  Julie Webster was first Cwm Ogwr female across the line. Nick, myself, Kelly and Liz all ran our fastest times on the course whilst there were impressive times throughout the field. Heather, Sian LG and Helen ran with Rhiannon in her first 10K finishing hand in hand showing the amazing camaraderie and support in the club. Over a dozen of us stayed to cheer them across the line.

 

Saturday 19th – parkruns

 

An incredible parkrunday with a record 37 members running at a record 7 different parkruns. 29 of those were at Porthcawl which was another Zero to Hero ‘graduation run with Tammie Clemment running her first parkrun and several others running only their second or third. Chris Pratt returned to Porthcawl after 6 weeks of parkrun tourism and capped off an amazing year with yet another PB running the course in 20:47. There were also PB’s for Kelly Griffiths, Lucy Hancock and Rhiannon Buckley.

 

The two Neil’s ran at their home parkrun at Pontypridd whilst there was lots of tourism with David Sheard at Evesham, Chris Roberts at Harlow, Helen LJ setting a course best at the Gnoll and Fiona Drysdale at Milton Keynes. However, most impressive parkrun tourism has to go to Martin Beard and his partner Betty who ran the Yarrabilba parkrun in Australia.

 

Sunday 20th – Cottrell Park Trail 10K

 

Brain, Christie and I signed up for this one and travelled to the race together. It was the first time the event had been run and was set up by Sportzmad’s who apparently are looking at putting on more new events next year. The 10K was advertised as 60% grass, 30% trail and 10% road. They forgot to mention the mud which made up a lot of the grass percentage. A testing undulating 10K with one significant climb at around 6K but it was only around quarter of a mile. Brian was first across the line followed by myself and then Christie. No where near 10K PB’s despite the course measurement seeming a little short. Well organised event which actually sold out it’s 300 places. T-shirt, Christmas pud, Snickers bar, crisps and an energy gel in the goody bag so significantly more than the Pudding Run for around the same entry fee.

 

25th-28th: Christmas running

 

Sian Tossell and Juliet Amner ran Cardiff parkrun on Christmas day along with a barmy 420 who fancied a 9am run on Christmas morning. On Boxing Day there were 22 members across 4 parkruns with the Neils at Pontypridd, Helen LJ at the Gnoll, 16 at Porthcawl and Martin Beard getting another Australian parkrun in with Berrinba the location this time. Cwm Ogwr members have run every Welsh parkrun, over a dozen English parkruns, a couple of Scottish parkruns, a Polish parkrun, a US parkrun and three different Australian ones this year! Back home at Porthcawl Brian Cotton set a new PB with 21:01 whilst Juliet and Sian made it two parkruns in two days.

 

Most of Porthcawl parkrunners went on to do the Porthcawl Lions Boxing Day run and were joined by several more members. Unfortunately there isn’t a full list of results at the time of typing this so I’m not sure on exact numbers. Niki Puleio was first Cwm Ogwr member across the line and 17th out of a field of over 250. A day later, Christie made it three runs in just over 24 hours with the Old Fathers Time 5 mile race in Cardiff where he got a PB as did Antony Lewis who joined him for it. The 28th seen yet another event with Sian Tossell and Brian Cotton running the Port Talbot Harriers Handicap 5K which we’re awaiting confirmation of results for.

 

Chairman’s Runner of the Month – Rhiannon Buckley

 

Rhiannon ran her first parkrun just 5 or 6 weeks after joining Zero to Hero as a complete beginner and there’s been no stopping her since. This month she ran Aberavon Santa run, two more parkruns including another PB and signed up for one of the toughest 10K’s with the Merthyr Mawr Pudding Run. She also signed up for the Festive Four competition which meant running parkrun and the Lions run in the same morning which was a combined distance of 7.6 miles having not run that far previously. Not only that, but on one of the scoring systems for the Festive Four, Rhiannon is amongst the leaders and could win it with a good run on New Years Day at the Prince of Wales event. Amazing.

 

 

Still to come

 

As I’ve posted this a little early, there is actually another December event to come with Nos Galan which several members have signed up for. I’ll also be posting a ‘Review of 2015’ over the next few days which will include final results of this years club championship as well as reminiscing over a phenomenal year for the club.

The second half of November seen a bumper turn out at the Pembrey 10 miler,  XC relays, more parkruns and a couple of half marathons.

 

Cross Country call up

 

Firstly some exciting news with Kelly being called up to represent South Wales in the Welsh XC Championships! The race is in Buith Wells on December 12th where she will line up with a dozen others for South Wales and race against other regions.

November 21 – parkruns

Not great conditions for Porthcawl parkrun but 19 members braved the elements with Kelly, Jayne and Chris Roberts volunteering whilst 16 ran. Brian Cotton continued his amazing comeback with another PB whilst Dai K and Heather helped pace Rhiannon to a second PB in as many weeks.

 

Away from Porthcawl, Chris Pratt ran at Lanhydrock parkrun in Cornwall, apparently one of the toughest parkrun courses in the country, whilst Helen Lowcock James ran at the newly formed Gnoll parkrun.

November 22 – Pembrey MT10

An amazing turn out for this race. Last year there were just four who entered (Nick, Fiona, Lorna and I), but this year a massive 25. Really great to see so many signing up for a multi terrain race as well with Richards Sunday trail sessions introducing so many to it. I think ‘what trail shoes should I buy’ is one of the most popular questions on our Facebook page this year.

Weather conditions in the couple of weeks leading up to the race had been ‘character building’ as Richard would put it. High winds, rain and a drop in temperature after a mild autumn so far. However, on the day it was dry, cool and barely a breeze. A little disappointing in a bizarre sort of way as the race has a reputation for usually having challenging weather conditions making the multi terrain course all the more difficult. Some, including myself, even went for road shoes in the end.

 

This was also a club championship race with plenty at stake in the male and female categories. I went into the race with a lead having already collected points in all categories whilst Richard LJ needed to finish in the top 5 to take top spot, and effectively the title despite there being another event to go.

 

In the women’s championship, there were a couple of dark horses with Denise and Fiona on first glance at the table seemingly no where near, however, they hadn’t run in the 10 mile or off road category meaning they had up to 60 points still available to them which could propel them to the top. The leader prior to Pembrey was Liz who had already done a 10 miler in Brecon. Heather had collected full points at Brecon so was in a similar position to me where it was a case of seeing what everyone did. Kelly hadn’t run in the 10 mile category and could take top spot with a high finish. Unlike the men’s championship, the women’s would go down to the wire at the Pudding Run whatever the results at Pembrey but finishing positions here would have a big impact on who was favourite for the title.

 

As for the race itself, it starts with a 2 mile tarmac section where you’re wondering where the multi terrain is before it hits you as you disappear into the forestry and a short steep climb. A  mile or so later there’s a steep sandy incline to upset any rhythm which reduced a lot to walking, then there’s probably the longest climb of the race at mile 5. A bit more tarmac between miles 6-7 before a mile on the beach which a lot of our runners found quite warm despite being the end of November. Mile 8-9 is constant undulating sand dunes – I counted around 15, granted some of these were a case of 4-5 steps up before going back down again. The final mile is back on a harder trail but was one of the muddier sections and the only place I felt my road shoe option wasn’t ideal.

 

Nick was first across the line with me in a surprise second after Kevin (in third) admitted to setting off too fast and had to walk sections. We all walked 100 meters or so back up the course after finishing to meet Jayne and cheer in the remaining runners. I was expecting Dai, Antony or Richard to be next up so it was a surprise to see Christie. I really shouldn’t have been surprised though given Christies continuing improvement. He’d beaten his Brecon 10 miler time by over 3 minutes. Another couple of surprises with Kelly and Martin up next. Kelly ran a phenomenal time and was only a few seconds off the overall female record which was set on the road. Next up was Richard, Dai and Antony who at some point during the run had meet up and decided to run together. A combination of Martin and Christie being ahead of Richard plus Dai and Antony’s times coming through slightly ahead on chip time meant I kept top spot in the championship. Richard was quick to congratulate me and admitted he didn’t expect to get the position he needed as he’d been struggling since Snowdonia which was still less than a month previous.

 

Rob was up next knocking around 5 minutes off the time he set in Brecon was around the time he joined the club. A great run by Fiona Drysdale who was second Cwm Ogwr female. Steve Riddler and Lorna who had both run the course before came in next. Shelley and Richard Garratt were involved in a sprint finish… well, Richard sprinted, Shelley admitted she was trying to withhold the contents of her breakfast having given it her all on her first 10 miler, and first trail race! Fiona Evans beat her time from last year by 5 minutes, whilst Emma Loyns was delighted with a 1:38 finish on her first proper trail run, let alone trail race.

 

Heather and Denise came in together with Denise’s achilles injury reoccurring and requiring a visit to St Johns Ambulance after the finish. Great to see members helping out each other out. As it was Denise’s first 10 miler, she gets another PB next to her name. Another load of top performances and PB’s with Nicola, Natasha, Alica, Ann, Melanie and Gail finishing off the army of Cwm Ogwr runners. The race commentator was like a broken record saying ‘and another Cwm Ogwr runner, and another Cwm Ogwr runner’. A great race and one I think everyone enjoyed.

 

November 22 – Welsh Cross Country Relay Championships

 

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the Welsh XC relays were to be held on Newbridge Fields – surely too good an opportunity to turn down with it being so local. Just one small issue – it was just a couple of hours after the end of the Pembrey 10 miler. If I were to say 4 of us were up for making a team, you’d probably put me, Nick, Christie and Kevin among the nutters who would be up for doing both and that was our team.

 

None of us had held back in the 10 miler so this was going to be interesting. Two laps for each runner totalling just 4K. However, 4K pretty much means a 17-20 minute sprint through mud. The field was stacked with talented runners – a previous winner of Cardiff 10K, top half marathon finishers, Welsh XC championships, and regular first finishers at parkrun. Even some of the ‘B’ teams had sub 18 minute 5K runners and an absolute minimum of sub 20 runners. Nick set off first and managed to keep two other runners behind him. I was next up. I felt OK after the mornings race.. that was until I started running and instantly fell apart. It wasn’t long before the two teams Nick had finished ahead of were overtaking me. Last place. Well, this is new. I tried as best I could to keep the gap down to a minimum which was maybe about 15-20 seconds when I handed over to Kevin. Kevin ran a great leg to regain two places despite feeling the effects as much as the rest of us. Christie was on the final leg. Having lost one place, he fought well to keep one of the runners at bay but on much fresher legs, the guy who he was battling against overtook with only just over a kilometre to go.

 

We agreed that on fresh legs we’d have probably beaten at least two of the teams but I’m still really pleased we did it anyway. A first ever last place for all of us but who cares – we gave it a go and we’ll be back to do it again.

 

November 28 – parkruns

 

Another wet and windy parkrunday. No PB’s to be had today. Alica volunteered whilst Liz ran down to parkrun to join 12 other members running. There was more tourism with Chris Pratt and I visiting Pontypool parkrun whilst Helen returned to the Gnoll again, Fiona Drysdale at Penallta and Chris Roberts adding another new venue to the list with Hatfield Forest parkrun.

 

November 29 – half marathons

 

A rare Sunday where there’s no races within an hour or so drive – however, that doesn’t stop Cwm Ogwr members with Chris Pratt and Alica travelling to Wiltshire to do half marathons. Interestingly they’d ended up booking half marathons in the same county but not the same one with Alica choosing the Wilshire Half Marathon whilst Chris was doing the Downton Half Marathon 30 miles further down the road. They are running at the time of writing so I’ll update in the next blog.

 

Chairman’s runner of the month – Shelley Smithson

 

An excellent month for Shelley starting with the Richard Burton 10K where she only narrowly missed out on a PB and an age category club record. She made up for this a week later getting a 24:45 PB at parkrun and then a brilliant 1:35 finish in her first 10 miler. From zero to hero attendee to one of the fastest female members in the club and I think there’s a lot more to come.

 

Challenge updates

 

This mornings Half Marathon is number 14 of the 15 Chris set out to do this year. His visit to Pontypool parkrun yesterday also meant he only has one more Welsh parkrun to do to complete that challenge.

 

My parkrun yesterday was event number 93 in the quest to do 100. 5 weeks left to do another 7 (or more!).

 

A new challenge has also started with Alica confirming her intentions to do 40 races in her 40th year. She has written a bit about it here https://40at40site.wordpress.com/

 

Up next

 

December see’s the Aberavon Santa Run, a huge sign up for the Pudding Run, Christmas drinks, Christmas parkruns, Boxing Day running and lots more. Can’t wait.

November has been a month of parkruns, cross country and multi-terrain. The big November news is that Cwm Ogwr is now an award-winning club with an award-winning coach. Kelly, Chris Pratt and I attended the BAVO (Bridgend Association of Voluntary Organisations) on November 6 in the Heronston Hotel. We were presented with a ‘Highly Commended’ Volunteer award for the time and effort our coaches put in every week. Afternoon tea followed and it seems most runners are partial to the odd cake (carb loading obviously) so ours went down a treat.

 

The next day was the Welsh Athletics awards with Kevin, Aled, Dai and myself in attendance. Kevin won the award for ‘Endurance Participation coach of year’. Absolutely thrilled for Kevin and a massive boost for our club to able to state we have a Welsh Athletics award winning coach. The evening consisted of champagne on arrival and a three course dinner – although we were all very disappointed to discover the third course was a coffee and a small mint chocolate – where’s the dessert! It was a really good evening and we met and had photos with multiple major championship medallist Christian Malcolm, Welsh athlete of the year Seren Bundy Davies and double Paralympic Gold Medallist Aled Davies to name a few.

 

November 7 – parkruns

 

An amazing turnout with 27 Cwm Ogwr runners across 6 different parkruns. Starting at Porthcawl there were 17 in attendance with Niki Puleio leading the way with a sub 20 clocking despite windy conditions. I decided to pace sub 25 but realistically didn’t expect anyone to come with me given conditions. However, Shelley appeared on the start line and turns out a sub 25 pacer was perfect for her and she beat her PB by over a minute with a 24:45. Really pleased for her and I’m also pleased my last two pacing attempts have resulted in someone coming up to me afterwards and saying I’d helped them achieve a PB.

 

Over in Newport Richard Lowcock James had arranged for Cwm Ogwr to help with the pacing there. Kevin, Liz, Chris R, Dai Power and Sian T all went along to help pace times from 22 minutes through to 36 minutes. Great effort by all considering muddy conditions and a first time on the course for a couple of them as well.

 

Elsewhere, Fiona Drysdale was running the Krakow parkrun in Poland. Another country to add to our club parkrun list with Wales, England, Scotland and USA already on the list. Martin Beard ran the second Grangemoor parkrun. Neil J and Chris W warmed up for Sunday’s XC with speedy times at Pontypridd parkrun just either side of 20 minutes. Chris Pratt continued his mission to complete all existing parkruns as at the start of 2015 with Colby parkrun in Carmarthenshire (Pembrokeshire?). It turns out with more to do plus weekends away, he will be doing parkrun tourism for 6 weeks in a row.

 

November 8 – Llandaff XC

 

Fixture 2 of the Gwent Cross Country League. Disappointed we didn’t formally enter a team as it turns out we had enough male runners for this fixture as well. Neil Jones and Chris Williams were in attendance as well as Christie, Chris Pratt and myself who had run the first fixture in Newbridge Fields.

 

The weather in the week leading up to the race hadn’t been great so there was plenty of mud to contend with, particularly as the men’s race is the final event after several junior events and the senior women’s race. Close to 500 for this race and such is the quality of the field, we started about 90% of the way down at the start. A four lap course covering 6 miles in total. I have to admit, it felt more like 10 miles. Still enjoyed it though despite getting lapped only just approaching lap 3 and ending up with probably the first 30 overtaking me. Quite a rare experience to see the top club runners whizzing past as in bigger races like Cardiff 10K, you see them at the start if you’re lucky and that’s it. It did make me pick up the pace a little as well. Neil was first Cwm Ogwr runners across the line followed by Chris with a 3-4 minute gap back to me, then Chris Pratt then Christie.

 

November 14 – parkruns and Howling Bull 10K

 

Kevin had suggested in the week that a few more zero to hero members were ready for their parkrun initiation. Rhiannon, Kimberly, Kirsty and Lucy decided to give it a go and what a week they chose with wet and windy conditions at Porthcawl. Heather and Richard Garratt along with coaches Kelly and Kevin agreed to run with our new parkrunners – Heather being quick to point out she being supportive and no ducking out of ‘going for it’ herself.

 

At the front of the field, Nick decided to help pace his brother Saul to a PB. It was all going really well until with 50 meters to go Saul stopped to be sick but still ended up equalling his PB. Brian Cotton who is due to rejoin the club after a lengthy injury smashed his PB whilst Stephen Davies who was running his first parkrun also got a speedy sub 22 clocking. Sian Tossell ran her quickest parkrun in several months but unfortunately forgot her barcode so it wasn’t recorded. Our four newbies battled the elements and have set a marker for themselves to hopefully return and beat soon.

 

Elsewhere, Chris Pratt was up at 5am to leave his house at 6am in order to travel to Aberystwyth parkrun in his attempt to run all the Welsh parkruns that existed at the start of the year. Peter Harrop ran Richmond parkrun whilst Ann ran a personal course best at Colby.

 

Away from parkrun, Martin Beard, his wife Betty Lee and new Cwm Ogwr member Amy Jones were running the ‘Howling Bull’ race. A roughly 10K multi-terrain event with over 750 feet of elevation. A bargain at only £5 to enter. Just looking at the website and noticed this – “To make things more interesting there is a route ‘option’ at about 5 miles – you can choose the shorter and steeper ‘Suicide descent’ route (at your our risk..) or the more runnable ‘Bulls’ route… the choice is yours!”. Will have to find out which they chose.

 

November 15 – Mo Run 10K and Bath Skyline 10K

 

Orginially a couple of us intended doing Singleton Park XC but this was cancelled with only a couple of days notice. This was a bit of a blow to my mission to run 100 events but I soon discovered the Mo Run 10K was also on that day as an ideal substitute. It turned out our Porthcawl parkrun regulars Natalie, Jackie and Ceri were already signed up as was Sian Llewellyn-Goring. Even more luckily for me, there was a spare place going. Great atmosphere and a good fun race. I ran it in 42:28 which would have been a 35 second PB.. however, it turned out the course was short by around 300-400 meters- gutted. Ceri was also slightly faster than her Cardiff 10K whilst Jackie, Natalie and Sian were close to their bests. I’ve started writing my own personal blog on Fetcheveryone so there’s a more detailed account of this race at

http://www.fetcheveryone.com/blog-view.php?id=61263

 

One hilly multi-terrain 10K wasn’t enough for Martin and Betty so they did another a day later with Bath Skyline. Not quite as hilly as the Howling Bull but definitely challenging even without having done that the day before. Another couple of events to add to my ever growing list.

 

The parkrun effect

 

Now everyone knows I love parkrun and I love a stat so the parkrun weekly newsletter on 5 November was a very interesting read (article linked at the bottom of this section). From a group of 13 runners in October 2004 running a free time trial at Bushy park to now regularly over 125,000 runners across 762 worldwide events with over 10,000 volunteers every week! It shows no signs of stopping either with up to 5 new parkruns starting every single week. The parkrun barcodes are in sequential order and when I signed up in March 2013 I was given number 384475. There are now over 2,000,000 people registered to parkrun worldwide meaning over 1.6 million people have registered in the last 2 and a half years. The article suggests that by their 20 anniversary in 2024 there could be 5000 worldwide events with 1,000,000 runners every Saturday.

 

As for Cwm Ogwr – Richard LJ could be in the 500 club by then. Richards total of 175 parkruns at the time of writing puts him in the top 2000 or 0.1% for most parkruns. My 22 different parkruns is also something only 0.1% of parkrunners have done. At Porthcawl, Cwm Ogwr members have run the course over 2000 times and are only second to Bridgend in terms of number of runs, and  third for number of different runners (89).

 

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/news/2015/11/05/weekly-newsletter-5th-november-2015/

The Cwm Ogwr 100 club

 

Lets be clear – this isn’t the 100 parkrun club but something much more important – running 100 events for Cwm Ogwr. The first inductee to the club was a certain Gareth Jenkins on the 27/09/14 having taken 109 weeks to get there. A few weeks later Nick joined the 100 club on 22/11/14 having only taken 81 weeks from his first Cwm Ogwr event. Finally, we have a third member and first female inductee with Kelly Owen running her 100th event on 07/11/15 taking 167 weeks to get there.

 

There’s due to be an influx to the club with Dai Cappell (97), Richard LJ (92), Chris Pratt (90) and Dai Kembrey (86) all likely to join in the next couple of months. Chris is likely to smash the record for quickest to reach the target as well as he’s likely to achieve it just 60 weeks after his first event with us.

 

The challenges update

 

Firstly, I’m up to 89 on my mission to run 100 events in 2015. 11 to go with just 6 weekends left.

 

Fair play to Chris Pratt on his quest to do all the Welsh parkruns that existed at the start of the year. With so many other challenges he got to 3 months to go with several still to do but has travelled to Colby and Aberystwyth in the last two weeks which will be his longest ‘there and back’ trips. He has just two remaining which are Penrhyn parkrun near Bangor which I’ll come onto later, and Pontypool which I’ll be joining him for on November 28 – it’s also their anniversary parkrun so we’re hoping there might be lots of cakes.

 

Chris’s other major challenge was 15 half marathons in 2015. Some might say controversially he is using Snowdon Marathon to count towards two of his halves, but given he never intended doing a marathon this year, then this did mean things had to be reassessed. So counting the marathon as two, his total for the year so far is 13. The remaining two have already been booked with one in the New Forest and the other in North Wales which conveniently helps with the parkrun challenge as he is doing Penrhyn whilst up that way.

 

Chairman’s races to enter 2015/16

 

5 December: Aberavon Santa Run 5K. Chip timed run along Aberavon sea front. All abilities welcome. Santa suit included in the £10 entry fee. Starts at 11am so chance to fit in a parkrun beforehand as well.

 

20 December: Cottrell Park Christmas Cracker 10K. An off road, multi terrain, undulating 10K not far from Culverhouse Cross. £16 entry. Chip timed. Tech t-shirt for finishers. 450 feet of incline which is similar to our valley lap.

 

17 January: Riverbank Rollick. A 9 mile off road event just the other side of the Severn Bridge. I guarantee it’ll be the muddiest race you’ve done but great fun. Mostly flat with a couple of hills thrown in for good measure. Just £8 to enter with lots and lots of cakes to choose from at the end. A few already signed up so why not join them.

 

21 February: Margam Trail Half Marathon. Just £20 to enter and just 20 minutes down the road for most of us. Details still to be confirmed but expect it to at least be ‘undulating’. They have said trail shoes recommended but not vital and suggested a lot is on firm tracks so sounds like a gentle introduction to an off road half marathon.

 

2 April: Vale Ultra. Options of 18 miles or 32 miles. If you’ve done a half marathon, the 18 is an ideal next distance. If you’ve done a marathon, then surely Ultra is next target!? £24 to enter the 18 miler, £30 to enter the 32 miler which I think is very reasonable. It’s also on a Saturday so it’s ideal for going out for food / drinks that evening.

 

Next up

 

This weekend see’s around 25 Cwm Ogwr members at the Pembrey multi-terrain 10 miler. Four mad fools – Nick, Christie, Kevin and myself are then going to Newbridge Fields to run in a Cross Country Relay event. November finishes with another half marathon for Chris Pratt whilst I’m trying my best to convince people to join me for the Blorenge 4K Fell Race. It’s only 2 and a half miles… however, the first mile ascends 1500 feet – that’s nearly double the final hill in Snowdon in half the distance, and makes the Murder Mile look like a walk in the park! Onwards and most certainly upwards.

 

The second half of November seen a bumper turn out at the Pembrey 10 miler,  XC relays, more parkruns and a couple of half marathons.

 

Cross Country call up

 

Firstly some exciting news with Kelly being called up to represent South Wales in the Welsh XC Championships! The race is in Buith Wells on December 12th where she will line up with a dozen others for South Wales and race against other regions.

November 21 – parkruns

Not great conditions for Porthcawl parkrun but 19 members braved the elements with Kelly, Jayne and Chris Roberts volunteering whilst 16 ran. Brian Cotton continued his amazing comeback with another PB whilst Dai K and Heather helped pace Rhiannon to a second PB in as many weeks.

 

Away from Porthcawl, Chris Pratt ran at Lanhydrock parkrun in Cornwall, apparently one of the toughest parkrun courses in the country, whilst Helen Lowcock James ran at the newly formed Gnoll parkrun.

November 22 – Pembrey MT10

An amazing turn out for this race. Last year there were just four who entered (Nick, Fiona, Lorna and I), but this year a massive 25. Really great to see so many signing up for a multi terrain race as well with Richards Sunday trail sessions introducing so many to it. I think ‘what trail shoes should I buy’ is one of the most popular questions on our Facebook page this year.

Weather conditions in the couple of weeks leading up to the race had been ‘character building’ as Richard would put it. High winds, rain and a drop in temperature after a mild autumn so far. However, on the day it was dry, cool and barely a breeze. A little disappointing in a bizarre sort of way as the race has a reputation for usually having challenging weather conditions making the multi terrain course all the more difficult. Some, including myself, even went for road shoes in the end.

 

This was also a club championship race with plenty at stake in the male and female categories. I went into the race with a lead having already collected points in all categories whilst Richard LJ needed to finish in the top 5 to take top spot, and effectively the title despite there being another event to go.

 

In the women’s championship, there were a couple of dark horses with Denise and Fiona on first glance at the table seemingly no where near, however, they hadn’t run in the 10 mile or off road category meaning they had up to 60 points still available to them which could propel them to the top. The leader prior to Pembrey was Liz who had already done a 10 miler in Brecon. Heather had collected full points at Brecon so was in a similar position to me where it was a case of seeing what everyone did. Kelly hadn’t run in the 10 mile category and could take top spot with a high finish. Unlike the men’s championship, the women’s would go down to the wire at the Pudding Run whatever the results at Pembrey but finishing positions here would have a big impact on who was favourite for the title.

 

As for the race itself, it starts with a 2 mile tarmac section where you’re wondering where the multi terrain is before it hits you as you disappear into the forestry and a short steep climb. A  mile or so later there’s a steep sandy incline to upset any rhythm which reduced a lot to walking, then there’s probably the longest climb of the race at mile 5. A bit more tarmac between miles 6-7 before a mile on the beach which a lot of our runners found quite warm despite being the end of November. Mile 8-9 is constant undulating sand dunes – I counted around 15, granted some of these were a case of 4-5 steps up before going back down again. The final mile is back on a harder trail but was one of the muddier sections and the only place I felt my road shoe option wasn’t ideal.

 

Nick was first across the line with me in a surprise second after Kevin (in third) admitted to setting off too fast and had to walk sections. We all walked 100 meters or so back up the course after finishing to meet Jayne and cheer in the remaining runners. I was expecting Dai, Antony or Richard to be next up so it was a surprise to see Christie. I really shouldn’t have been surprised though given Christies continuing improvement. He’d beaten his Brecon 10 miler time by over 3 minutes. Another couple of surprises with Kelly and Martin up next. Kelly ran a phenomenal time and was only a few seconds off the overall female record which was set on the road. Next up was Richard, Dai and Antony who at some point during the run had meet up and decided to run together. A combination of Martin and Christie being ahead of Richard plus Dai and Antony’s times coming through slightly ahead on chip time meant I kept top spot in the championship. Richard was quick to congratulate me and admitted he didn’t expect to get the position he needed as he’d been struggling since Snowdonia which was still less than a month previous.

 

Rob was up next knocking around 5 minutes off the time he set in Brecon was around the time he joined the club. A great run by Fiona Drysdale who was second Cwm Ogwr female. Steve Riddler and Lorna who had both run the course before came in next. Shelley and Richard Garratt were involved in a sprint finish… well, Richard sprinted, Shelley admitted she was trying to withhold the contents of her breakfast having given it her all on her first 10 miler, and first trail race! Fiona Evans beat her time from last year by 5 minutes, whilst Emma Loyns was delighted with a 1:38 finish on her first proper trail run, let alone trail race.

 

Heather and Denise came in together with Denise’s achilles injury reoccurring and requiring a visit to St Johns Ambulance after the finish. Great to see members helping out each other out. As it was Denise’s first 10 miler, she gets another PB next to her name. Another load of top performances and PB’s with Nicola, Natasha, Alica, Ann, Melanie and Gail finishing off the army of Cwm Ogwr runners. The race commentator was like a broken record saying ‘and another Cwm Ogwr runner, and another Cwm Ogwr runner’. A great race and one I think everyone enjoyed.

 

November 22 – Welsh Cross Country Relay Championships

 

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the Welsh XC relays were to be held on Newbridge Fields – surely too good an opportunity to turn down with it being so local. Just one small issue – it was just a couple of hours after the end of the Pembrey 10 miler. If I were to say 4 of us were up for making a team, you’d probably put me, Nick, Christie and Kevin among the nutters who would be up for doing both and that was our team.

 

None of us had held back in the 10 miler so this was going to be interesting. Two laps for each runner totalling just 4K. However, 4K pretty much means a 17-20 minute sprint through mud. The field was stacked with talented runners – a previous winner of Cardiff 10K, top half marathon finishers, Welsh XC championships, and regular first finishers at parkrun. Even some of the ‘B’ teams had sub 18 minute 5K runners and an absolute minimum of sub 20 runners. Nick set off first and managed to keep two other runners behind him. I was next up. I felt OK after the mornings race.. that was until I started running and instantly fell apart. It wasn’t long before the two teams Nick had finished ahead of were overtaking me. Last place. Well, this is new. I tried as best I could to keep the gap down to a minimum which was maybe about 15-20 seconds when I handed over to Kevin. Kevin ran a great leg to regain two places despite feeling the effects as much as the rest of us. Christie was on the final leg. Having lost one place, he fought well to keep one of the runners at bay but on much fresher legs, the guy who he was battling against overtook with only just over a kilometre to go.

 

We agreed that on fresh legs we’d have probably beaten at least two of the teams but I’m still really pleased we did it anyway. A first ever last place for all of us but who cares – we gave it a go and we’ll be back to do it again.

 

November 28 – parkruns

 

Another wet and windy parkrunday. No PB’s to be had today. Alica volunteered whilst Liz ran down to parkrun to join 12 other members running. There was more tourism with Chris Pratt and I visiting Pontypool parkrun whilst Helen returned to the Gnoll again, Fiona Drysdale at Penallta and Chris Roberts adding another new venue to the list with Hatfield Forest parkrun.

 

November 29 – half marathons

 

A rare Sunday where there’s no races within an hour or so drive – however, that doesn’t stop Cwm Ogwr members with Chris Pratt and Alica travelling to Wiltshire to do half marathons. Interestingly they’d ended up booking half marathons in the same county but not the same one with Alica choosing the Wilshire Half Marathon whilst Chris was doing the Downton Half Marathon 30 miles further down the road. They are running at the time of writing so I’ll update in the next blog.

 

Chairman’s runner of the month – Shelley Smithson

 

An excellent month for Shelley starting with the Richard Burton 10K where she only narrowly missed out on a PB and an age category club record. She made up for this a week later getting a 24:45 PB at parkrun and then a brilliant 1:35 finish in her first 10 miler. From zero to hero attendee to one of the fastest female members in the club and I think there’s a lot more to come.

 

Challenge updates

 

This mornings Half Marathon is number 14 of the 15 Chris set out to do this year. His visit to Pontypool parkrun yesterday also meant he only has one more Welsh parkrun to do to complete that challenge.

 

My parkrun yesterday was event number 93 in the quest to do 100. 5 weeks left to do another 7 (or more!).

 

A new challenge has also started with Alica confirming her intentions to do 40 races in her 40th year. She has written a bit about it here https://40at40site.wordpress.com/

 

Up next

 

December see’s the Aberavon Santa Run, a huge sign up for the Pudding Run, Christmas drinks, Christmas parkruns, Boxing Day running and lots more. Can’t wait.

October has already been one of the most exciting months in Cwm Ogwr’s history. We’ve now got our 100 member and are up to 103 in total, there was a huge turnout at the Cardiff Half Marathon, London Marathon ballot results club records smashed at parkrun and a significant award for one of our members.

 

October 3 – parkruns and the Cardiff Festival of Running

 

Two parkrun venues for the first parkrunday of the month. Chris Pratt and I visited Pontypridd parkrun whilst there were 17 Cwm Ogwr runners at Porthcawl. Highly recommend a visit to Pontypridd parkrun, however, it’s more for the café with 20% off for parkrunners and the recently opened Lido rather than the 3 lap course – will definitely return next summer. Back at Porthcawl, Nick had a score to settle after thinking he had run 19:26 the previous week to discover his time was 19:27 therefore equalling and not beating his own club record. This time, he actually thought he’d missed out by a second or two but his actual time came though as 19:25 – a new club record. There were also PB’s for Sue Roberts and Kayley Sullivan who knocked exactly 6 minutes off her time set in her first parkrun in June.

 

After the parkruns, a few of us went down the Cardiff Festival of Running. Richard LJ’s son Gwill (aged 2) ran the toddler dash 100 meters whilst Kelly and her husband, former Chairman and current member, David ran the family fun run 2.4K with their daughter Catrin and her cousin. I also did the 2.4K course with the twins in a double non-running buggy having had to run to the start due to a delay with our lunch. I had also intending entering one of the many mile events they had on offer but a quick check of previous year’s results suggested they were pretty speedy, elite races. I tweeted the organisers about my intention to enter as long as it wasn’t just for speedy ones and was told the events were open to all and it’d be fine. Thankfully Jackie Brace who is a member of Bridgend AC and works for Welsh Athletics was on the registration desk so I was able to ask for a little more information before signing up. Without naming the person, it turns out the ‘slowest’ runner on the entry list was someone who’s won several 5K events and even a Half Marathon. Funnily enough, I decided not to enter. In the end I didn’t see the race but was keen to find out the results… all but one runner run under 5 minutes for the mile. My mile PB according to my Garmin is 6:15. Needless to say I’m relieved I didn’t enter and I think I’ll leave that one to the elites.

 

 

 

October 4 – Cardiff Half Marathon

 

Cardiff Half Marathon has always been well represented by Cwm Ogwr runners. It was our first half marathon as a club back in 2012 when 9 of us did it and a club record was set at 1:39:05. In 2013 we had 17 runners and the club record tumbled to 1:29:31. Then last year we had 15 runners with John setting what remains the official club record of 1:29:05 – I say official because one of our members Neil Jones has run a 1:25 before joining the club and Kevin ran a 1:28 in Newport but the course was officially classified as being short. Now I heard quite a few of our members had signed up and was expecting maybe 20 something runners. In my capacity as club stato I asked the night before for everyone’s race numbers so I could draw up a list of runners to help me find results after the race, particularly as many would have signed up before joining the club. It was only when the replies started coming in I realised that not only did we have over 30 members, but we’d exceeded 40 with 41 Cwm Ogwr runners – amazing!

 

The race itself was approached in so many ways – many of the Snowdon Marathoners choosing to take it easy or pace other runners, members running the distance for the first time and wanting to just get round, and plenty more aiming for PB’s. Despite a club record performance the day before, it was Nick first across the line in a PB time of 1:31:41 putting him second in the half marathon rankings. Neil Jones helped pace Chris Williams who smashed his previous best by around 5 minutes with a 1:33:54 whilst Kevin who wasn’t going for a PB still got on with a 1:35:24 despite starting in the 2 hour pen. New member Richie Pett set a PB with Dai Kembery who was doing a running naked still managed a comfortable 1:40:38. I think I should point out here that by running naked I meant with no watch / other technology – some parkruns encourage doing this from time to time – I do wonder if there’s ever been a misunderstanding?!

 

Whilst stood in the starting pen with Richard LJ and Lorna we seen someone in a Cwm Ogwr vest we didn’t recognise. It turns out it was Aled’s mate who spotted our bemused expression and announced ‘I’m Lloyd, the pole vaulter’. He finished in 1:41. Neil Harris was disappointed with a 1:46 whilst Aled also finished in that time having started in the 2:15+ pen. It turns out he ran with several club members along the way with his usual tough love style of encouragement prompting many to clock their fastest mile at around the time he ran with them. Christie Coleman continued his amazing PB streak coming in just under 1:49 with David Sheard and Richard LJ just behind both getting their best times since joining the club. Chris Roberts also managed a sub 1:50 whilst I ran the whole way pacing Lorna to PB and sub 1:50 finish as well. She became only the 4 Cwm Ogwr member to go sub 1:50 after Helen D, Kelly and Amy. Stephen Davies who only started running at the start of 2015 set out with a target of just getting under 2 hours but beat that by quite a margin coming in under 1:54. Rob Pritchard set a PB with a 1:55 but was disappointed not to be closer to 1:50.

 

Next up was Chris Pratt who ran a 1:56 despite having run just over 9 miles before starting and ending up with a total mileage just short of 23 miles.  Fiona Evans was a few seconds behind with a best time since joining the club but a little disappointed not to get a career PB, whilst Fiona Drysdale came in just under 2 hours with the same situation. Steve Riddler missed out on sub 2 hours by 7 seconds after admitting to going out a bit too fast at the start before a trio of PB’s for Dawn, Emma and half marathon debut runner Lewis. Richard Garratt was up next nursing a few niggles and taking it easy with more Snowdon training to be done. Next up was one of the stories of the weekend – 24 hours prior to the race start, Shelley was recovering for her longest run ever of 8 miles the day before and thinking about maybe running her first marathon sometime in 2016. A couple of hours later, a place became available and with some ‘gentle encouragement’ from other members she decided to do it! She ended up running with Denise in a very respectable debut half marathon time of 2:07:28 which I was quick to point out is over 2 minutes quicker than I manage on my first half five years ago. Despite being well off his personal best, Peter Harrop was delighted to get round having been out of action for several weeks with injuries. There was another trio of PB’s with Ceri, Natasha and Melanie up next with Heather Garratt who had helped pace. Antony was another Snowdon runner offering to pace and trying to keep the niggles at bay and helped Gail get a PB with Jackie, Ann and Natalie all following shortly afterwards. Alica was gutted with her time having trained really well for the event but we’ve all been impressed with her attitude and determination to get on with things and she’s already planning her next challenges. The blue wave that descended on Cardiff was completed with Helen G, Dai Power and Amanda Pallister. Another fantastic day to be part of Cwm Ogwr Running Club.

 

 

October 10 – parkruns

 

Three venues run at by Cwm Ogwr members this week with Ann Davies back at Colby, Chris W and Neil J running at Pontypridd and a bumper 22 runners at Porthcawl. On Tuesday, a new member joined the club – Niki Puleio. Whilst the coaches ask all the relevant questions to assess level of running fitness, I’m always straight in there with the.. “so, what races have you done?”. Now for me, the answer was very exciting because a) the answer was Porthcawl parkrun (yay, another parkrun regular) and b) he finished in 6 place last week. One place ahead of a certain Mr Harris who was busy breaking the club record. Niki’s time… 19:17 – so if he’d joined a week earlier he’d have been the club record holder. I think we have a bit of competition on our hands. Meanwhile, Neil Jones is actually our fastest parkrunner if you include pre-club times so surely it’s only a matter of time before he breaks the record?

 

Unsurprisingly what happened was a record breaking parkrunday. Niki and Nick finished 6 and 7 again – exactly the same positions two weeks in a row. Niki managed a 19:28 whilst Nick got a 19:33. It was only later in the day we discovered Neil had run Pontypridd parkrun and he’d messaged me to say he’d run it in 19 minutes. Obviously I rushed to check the time wondering 19 minutes what? 19:00! A new club record by a massive 25 seconds. Chris Williams also annihilated his previous best 5K time and went sub 20 for the first time with a 19:57 meaning we had four sub 20 times! Not only that, but 3 of them were in the top 10 fastest 5K times ever run by a Cwm Ogwr member.  There were also superb PB’s for Denise who went sub 25 for the first time, Emma, Karen, Sue and Kayley.

 

October 11th – Newbridge Fields Cross Country

 

The women’s race was 6.6K and saw new member Betty Lee and off road regular Fiona Drysdale representing Cwm Ogwr. Betty completed the 2 lap course in just over 33 minutes with Fiona less than a minute behind. That’s around 25 minutes for a 5K so great times by both.

 

The men’s race was a fraction over 10K with 3 laps of Newbridge Fields with a very short sharp incline on each lap. The men’s race is incredibly competitive so we all stood towards the back in the starting pen – even Nick. A good turnout by the men with Nick, Chris Pratt, Martin, David Sheard, Christie and I competing. Nick completed the course in an incredible time of just over 42 minutes. I was delighted to knock almost 6 minutes of my 2014 time on the same course with a sub 45 clocking. Chris Pratt was next up with a solid 47 minute ‘not going for it’ time which was less than a minute away from his Cardiff 10K PB – however, it should be noted most of us clocked it as 6.0 miles rather than 6.2. A similar situation for Christie, David and Martin who were all also close to road 10K times despite the unfamiliar terrain and small inclines.

 

October 17th – parkruns and Invincibl

 

23 runners across two parkruns this week with Denise and Fiona Drysdale taking a trip to Pontypridd parkrun where Neil Jones was also running. Apparently much food and drink had been consumed this week so another attempt at the club record was off the cards but he still managed the fastest parkrun time of the day with a 19:41. Back at Porthcawl Niki continued his unbeaten streak against usual first finisher Nick with 19:43 and 19:53 respectively. Nick’s brother Saul who joined after last weeks parkrun was next up with his second sub 21 time in as many weeks. There was a couple of awesome PB’s with Emma knocking almost a minute off her time last week and Dawn also improving her time again. Steve Riddler joined the parkrun 50 club having run all at Porthcawl starting on event number 6.

 

Dai Power did the Invincibl event in Caerphilly. A ‘Survival of the Fittest’ type event with a mixture of running, obstacles and a bit of mud as shown by the state of daps afterwards.

 

 

October 18th – Ponty Plod and Tonmawr Hilly 5

 

Richard LJ posted about the Ponty Plod event before Snowdon training had really commenced and suggested it would be a nice tester a week before the main event. A hilly off road 11 miler. Heather, Richard G and Kelly decided to sign up. I might have myself but was due to be away that weekend. Thankfully everyone made it round in one piece and recommended it for next year. It’s on my ever increasing list for 2016.

 

Meanwhile, a last minute change of plan meaning I was home for the weekend gave me the option of either joining them for the Plod or going to more recently announced Tonmawr Hilly 5. The latter was organised by Port Talbot Harriers as a club championship event and inviting local clubs to join them for free in a similar vein to the Afan Argoed Half Marathon. My training plan suggested a hilly off road 11 miler was a bit excessive so I decided to go for a plod around this one instead. Whilst I’m happy to take it easy at parkrun most weeks, not giving it 100% in a race is rare for me so had to constantly remind myself there’s just six days to go until Snowdon Marathon. Got round in just under 42 minutes and was actually very tempted to do a second lap but managed to stop myself. Look forward to hopefully racing it next year.

 

London Marathon ballot

 

It turned out that around 20 members had balloted for the 2016 London Marathon when it opened back in May this year. The chance of getting in through the ballot was debated my many with estimates anywhere between 1 in 15 to a 1 in 25 chance – not great odds. Thankfully we did have two members receive the Bumble-Bee Magazine indicating they were successful with Richard Lowcock James and Pat Stanley. The unsuccessful members will have another chance in the club draw provided they can supply evidence of being unsuccessful and were members at the time of the ballot opening.

 

 

 

Welsh Athletics Award

 

A few weeks ago I Aled alerted me that Welsh Athletics had opened nominations for their annual awards. I’d already seen this on the website so after some discussion with Kelly and several reminders from Aled, we decided to nominate Kevin for one of the coaching awards. Yours truly completed the form – and as you can imagine, it was a lengthy, convincing account of why Kevin was worthy of the award. A few weeks passed and Kevin put a message on our Facebook page to say he was very happy with a letter he’d received through the post. Myself and Kelly pretended we didn’t know what it could be and after finally getting Kevin to confirm it to us on Facebook Messenger, Kelly posted the following on the club Facebook page.

 

Super exciting announcement:

Welsh Athletics have awarded Kevin with an award for “Endurance Participation Coach of the Year”

Amazing achievement and very well deserved!

… Award ceremony on Saturday 7th November.

 

Everyone was delighted for Kevin with dozens of members commenting on how he had helped them ranging from total beginners to the fastest in the club. Absolutely delighted he has got the award.. just need to try and sort out tickets so I can be there to see him collect it now!

 

Coach Kelly

 

More great coach related news this month as Kelly completed her coaching assessment on the 17th October and is now officially a Welsh Athletics Coach. Although we don’t always agree on everything, I’m so pleased for Kelly and her hard work and commitment to the coaching course has been rewarded. Kelly started the running club, is one of our fastest female runners and commits more time to the club than anyone (including the Chairman) in her role as club manager, membership secretary, race director for the 5 miler and now official coach. She really is Mrs Cwm Ogwr. A massive thank you from every member of the club and congratulations.

 

Next up

 

Well for 13 of us – it’s Snowdon Marathon which I think will probably warrant a blog post of it’s own so watch this space. Whilst training has been pretty similar across the 13 runners, it’s the approach to the taper which has certainly raised some eyebrows. Some doing their longest run 4 weeks prior to the marathon, others just 2 weeks before. Then there’s the Ponty Plod 11 miler six days before the event. There is no hard and fast rules to marathon training and tapering and whatever gets you to the start line feeling good is the important thing. There’s been a few injury scares but fingers crossed, we’ll all be able to give it 100% on the day.

 

Although I feel it does add a bit of pressure, I’m sure there’s no chance of hiding the fact there is a tracker so feel free to spend your Saturday morning / early afternoon telling everyone how we’re getting on. The link is on the Snowdon Marathon website and I’m sure will be posted on Facebook several times this week. There’s also a start list on the website with all our numbers on in case that’s required rather than names.

 

Good luck to my fellow CORC marathoners Antony L, Dai K, Fiona E, Kelly, Aled, Heather, Richard G, Richard LJ, Steve, Richie, Chris P and Kevin – I look forward to a drink or two afterwards with you all.

 

The second half of October for Cwm Ogwr included the Snowdonia Marathon, the club London Marathon ballot, Richard Burton 10K and yet more parkrun records.

 

Club London Marathon Ballot

 

The club ballot was drawn on October 22 before our final training session before Snowdonia. Unfortunately, due to changes in allocation, we only had 1 place… and the winner was… Natasha Kerr. Really pleased for Natasha who was keen to run her first marathon in 2016 and will now get to do it at one of the best in the world.

 

2016 plans

 

Our club Facebook page was even busier than usual in the couple of days following the marathon with many members inspired to do their first marathon and many others considering their next challenges and planning for 2016. I think next year can almost be broken down to a few key events.

 

Mar / Apr – Half Marathons – choices of Newport, Llanelli, Merthyr, Cardiff World Half, Bath, Great Welsh.

 

2 April – Vale Coastal Ultra – choice of 18 miler or 32 miler. Already 10 members signed up for this.

 

1 May – Brecon to Cardiff Ultra – a 42 mile Ultra! Only Dai K signed up at time of writing but there has been some interest from others

 

26 June – Swansea Half Marathon – think we have quite a few members looking to do this as their first half marathon and should be big attendance

 

25 September – Loch Ness Marathon – Dai K and Aled championing this one in their quest to run a marathon in each of the four home nations

 

29 October – Snowdonia Marathon – several have already booked accommodation and it looks like we could even exceed the 13 runners from this year.

 

Of course – this is all without mentioning Cardiff 10K in September and the October Cardiff Half where we had amazing turnouts this year, and there’s at least 100 other events to choose from within an hours drive.

 

October 24th – parkruns

 

Despite a lot of regulars being away in Snowdon, there was still a decent parkrun contingent with Cwm Ogwr represented at 5 different parkruns. The main one of course being Porthcawl where Nick finished in 5th place with a 19:45. There was a unexpected return by one of our former members, Brian Cotton who got a 22:20 personal best. David Sheard celebrated his 100 parkrun with his best time since joining the club. Cwm Ogwr now have seven 100 club members with Dai Cappell also due to join in the next couple of weeks.

 

As mentioned, there was plenty of parkrun tourism with Fiona Drysdale running at Newport, Chris Roberts at Delemare parkrun and Niki clocking a super fast 19:26 in Cardiff parkrun. Whilst all this was going on, current record holder Neil Jones was eyeing up another club record attempt at Pontypridd after setting a time of 19:00 a couple of week previous. He did it, becoming the first Cwm Ogwr member to go sub 19 minutes with a 18:58.

 

Sunday 25th – Gnoll XC and Cosmeston Duathlon

 

Christie Coleman was Cwm Ogwr’s only representative for the West Glam Cross Country league fixture at the Gnoll in Neath. It sounded like a good one with a bit of mud and even a water crossing included. Christie is fast becoming one of our most regular runners now and is rivalling me, Chris and Nick when you look at events entered over the past couple of months.

 

Ann Davies entered the Cosmeston Duathlon involving a 5K run followed by a 20K bike with a 2.5K run to finish, and much to her surprise, she was first in the female super veteran category! Well done Ann.

 

October 29th – Ghost Run

 

There’s not many running events I haven’t tried – from road, trail, cross country, fell, other multi-terrain, super flat, super hilly… but this one was a new one on me – a cross country run requiring head torches! Organised by Run, Walk, Crawl –who also organise the Vale Ultra and Brecon to Cardiff Ultra – fancy dress was also encouraged. I decided to give it a go and take along my Ghostface costume (from the Scream franchise) which in the end I decided against after a quick inspection of the first part of the course suggested I’d be lucky to go 10 meters without falling over and potentially injuring myself. Baring in mind I’d run Snowdonia Marathon the weekend before, had given blood 3 days before, I wasn’t exactly looking for a fast time on the 5 mile course.

A much bigger turnout this year with 60 odd runners compared to just 35 last year. As mentioned. head torches were required as the course started on a pitch black field before going on paths, up Leckwith Hill and into a very muddy undulating forest. Back onto a field before doubling back through the forest with small reflective markers showing the way.

It was clear after the first half mile that there were 4 in contention.. and two of them were me and Nick! Nick and the other guy disappeared into the darkness within the first mile whilst i closely followed the guy in third. Overtook him on a hilly section through the forest just before mile 2 – third place! I don’t care if it’s a Halloween fun run, I want a podium finish. Slowly managed to pull away and finished a good 300-400m in front in the end.

Nick got SECOND place, I got THIRD! Damn that guy who turned up and ran the tough course in 35 minutes. Still, first ever double podium for Cwm Ogwr.

Lewis enjoyed the race as well and is even eyeing it up as a potential training run from his work which is just down the road. Juliet got into the Halloween spirit with a skeleton theme. She was third woman across the line.

A brilliant race. Highly recommend as a Cwm Ogwr on tour training night next year.

 

October 31st – parkruns

 

Two years ago I took my GhostFace costume to Porthcawl parkrun on what was advertised as the Halloween parkrun to find no one else was wearing fancy dress when I got there – thankfully I was wearing shorts and a running vest underneath so just took the costume off. Last year I wore a witches costume with some ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ during the run. I promised this year would be even better. I went as a zombie bride wearing an actual wedding dress and makeup. Someone said I’d gone as the ‘Bride of Dracula’ so lets say that’s what I was going for. There were some other great efforts and one of the photo’s including me, Pat, Chris Pratt and Natalie was actually used as the parkrun uk cover photo on Facebook for a few days.

There were 21 Cwm Ogwr members in attendance  but with so many either dressed up, recovering from Snowdon Marathon or keeping a bit back for the Sunday 10K there were no PBs to be had but all enjoyed it which is the main thing.

November 1 – Richard Burton 10K

Despite not much talk about this on our Facebook page, we had 18 turn up for this one. Unfortunately, most of us got held up in the first couple of kilometres due to a combination of a disorganised start pen plus most of us going to the start too late.

Nick was first across the line just over a minute ahead of me. Denise managed to get a PB despite an achilles injury reducing her to hobbling the final 400 meters or so. Denise was also 3rd in her age category. Juliet Amner also finished in an excellent 5th for her category in her first 10K for the club. Sian Llewellyn-Goring ran with Rhian Nolan who completed her first ever 10K and is already signed up to go further with the Lliswerry 8 in a couple of months.

Challenge 100

You may recall a couple of months ago I posted that having done so many events this year, getting to 100 might be possible. Well after Richard Burton 10K I’m now on 85. This is already a record as Nick previously held it with 82 last year. Plans are in place but 15 events with less than 2 months remaining is a big ask.

Chairman’s Runner of the Month – Nick Harris

Bit controversial not going for any of the Snowdon runners but it’s been an amazing month for Nick with a new 5K PB which was also a club record at the time. This was followed up with a Half Marathon PB in Cardiff just a day later. A week later he set a brilliant time in the Newbridge Fields Cross Country. There’s been a couple more sub 20 clockings at parkrun where he finished as high as 5th. This month marked an entire year without missing a parkrun. Plus there was the second place in the Ghost Run. Well done Nick.

Cwm Ogwr in numbers

Number of events: 404

Number of CORC runners in those events: 2,155

Number of miles run in those events: 11,421

Number of members who’ve ran for CORC: 110

Number of career parkruns ran by CORC members: 2,455

Number of different parkruns ran at: 56

Looking ahead

Two awards ceremonies, more cross country and a huge turnout at the Pembrey Multi-Terrain 10 miler in the next couple of weeks. Another amazing month for Cwm Ogwr.

September 5 – parkruns

Well I don’t know what’s going on at Porthcawl – a second week with no PB’s. To be fair it was Cardiff 10K the next day so most were being sensible and keeping something back for that. I say most as there still a few very speedy performances. I’d pointed out to Nick and Chris Pratt that it was their 100 Porthcawl parkrun’s so they both decided that deserved a ‘go for it’ performance. Nick notched his 3 sub 20 in as many weeks and now has more sub 20 times than any other member. Chris also went for it and agonisingly missed out by just 2 seconds. The also in-form Christie was even closer finishing just 1 second shy of his PB. Meanwhile over in Pontypridd, Neil Jones loosened up the legs ready for his Aquathon the next day clocking a 20:06.

September 6 – Cardiff 10K

The before photo

Cwm Ogwr speedsters starting pen selfie

An incredible day for Cwm Ogwr Running Club with 46 runners completing the course. This time last year we didn’t even have that many members. Even Aled Hughes ran! We had several members running their first official 10K race whilst most wanted to take advantage of the good weather conditions and super-flat course to go all out for a personal best. In the end 36 of us managed just that. Kevin was the first Cwm Ogwr runner across the line in 41:01 with Nick close behind and me a further 2 minutes back, all getting personal bests despite our CPR efforts the weekend before. Aled, Dai K and Chris Pratt were the next three all also achieving PB’s. Chris Roberts and Anthony Lewis both narrowly missed out.

 

Heather was first Cwm Ogwr female and it was the first time she has finished ahead of Kelly. Her time of 49:17 was a PB and is the fastest 10K this year by a female member and is the third fastest in the clubs history. Kelly was just 15 seconds behind missing out on her best by 34 seconds. Rob Pritchard, Christie Coleman and Richard Garratt all snuck under sub 50 making it PB’s for all three. Lorna narrowly missed out with 50:12 whilst Fiona Evans was 14 in her age category with a PB time of 50:49. Steve Riddler was next up with 50:54 before Fiona Drysdale continued the PB’s with 51:04 and Shelley Smithson who ran a 51:26 in only her second ever 10K having only run her first a couple of months ago.

Denise Bradley made it six PB’s in six 10K races whilst Dermot ran a 53:54 in his first 10K with the club. Next up was Liz Davis who smashed her PB by over 4 minutes with a 54:56. Liz has now gained PB’s at 5K (twice), 10K, 10 miles, Half Marathon (twice) and Marathon distances this year!

Lewis, Nicola, Jonathan, Ceri and Ann all finished in under an hour whilst Gail was agonisingly just 20 seconds outside. All PB’s bar Jonathan who missed out by just 15 seconds on his long standing record. Jackie, June and Andrea all ran fantastic times in their first 10K’s with the club followed by Rachel, Erin and Lisa who were the newbies to the distance this time last year. The PB’s continued with Natasha, Natalie and Katie before Sherril and Melanie came in. Sian Llewellyn-Goring and Pat were just one second apart in their PB performances with Cerys knocking a couple of minutes off her best. Hannah was up next followed by PB’s for Karen, Caroline and Dai Power all running their first 10K’s for the club. Our final finisher was Jayne Kembery who knocked over 4 minutes off her first 10K time back in May

The after photo with Olympic Marathon runner and former Marathon World Record Holder Steve Jones

.

September 6 – Ross on Wye 10K / Wentwood Woodlark / Pontypridd Aquathon

We actually had over 50 members in action that morning as Martin ran the Ross on Wye 10K, Richard LJ ran the Wentwood Woodlark and our Ponty parkrun members Neil J, Neil H and Chris W did the Pontypridd Aquathon. Fantastic times all round and the Ponty boys are now going on to do a triathlon.

Richard LJ at tackling the Wentwood Woodlark

Martin (left of photo) at the Ross on Wye 10K

Pontypridd Aquathon finishers

September 9 – Hilly 4

In a way, this event was perfectly timed to capitalise on the buzz created after the very successful weekend of running. Just as we did for the Kenfig 5K, we decided training was cancelled with everyone encouraged to attend the race which starts at the Old House Inn in Llangynwyd. Unfortunately the 10K had tweaked a few muscles so a few sensibly took an extra rest day whilst the early start time (6.30pm) meant a few couldn’t make I due to work / other commitments. Most were fair enough but not sure about Amanda Pallister ditching us for bingo! Still we had an amazing turnout of 24 members, bearing in mind the year before we had just 6! Still waiting full list of results but pretty sure we might have edged Brackla for the most represented club just as we had been in the Kenfig 5K.

I had an angry mob awaiting me on arrival as I’d claimed the race was ‘no worse than the valley lap’ in an attempt to encourage more members to attend. I’d clearly forgot that one of the ways to get there is by driving up the final hill so they saw what was coming in advance. Thankfully I think they’ve forgiven me and ended up enjoying the challenge… and the chips / £2 off a pint might have helped quite a bit as well. As for the race itself, it was the usual sight of seeing Nick disappear into the distance within the first mile before an interesting race for second place emerged.

I’d started quickly and was in second place (out of the club members of course, not overall) before Aled overtook me at after half a mile or so and started pulling away. Dave Evans came past at 2 miles with Dai Cappell putting me down to 5 Cwm Ogwr runner on the long downhill section. Approaching the final hill, Aled wasn’t initially in sight with Dai Cappell just ahead of me and then Dave Evans.

Now, if your reading this and are part of our Facebook group then you’ll know I how much abuse I get off Aled so I was determined to catch him.. and I did. Two defeats in three days for Aled Hughes against ‘the one paced wonder’. To be fair, on both occasions he was gracious in defeat and I’m under no illusions that he’ll be half hour or more ahead of me when it comes to the big test up in Snowdon. I totally get the ‘run for fun’ and it’s not all about being competitive but it is nice to have a bit of friendly rivalry though.

Chairman’s Runner of the Month (August) – Christie Coleman

An incredible month for Christie who was already on form and getting PB’s before the month even started. In August, he started the month with a parkrun PB followed by a 10 mile debut PB the next day. Another two parkrun PB’s followed with Christie reducing his time by over a minute and going sub 25 for the first time. In Afan Argoed HM he obliterated his Swansea Half Marathon time set less than 2 months earlier by 12 minutes and also ran an excellent time in the much hillier Severn Bridge Half Marathon just two week later. Well done Christie.

2015 goals and targets – the Third-Quarter Report

Ok, technically the end of September is the third quarter but I thought I’d do it a bit early to see how the three that wrote a big list are doing…

My progress…

In short mine were to get PB’s at 5K, 10K, 10 mile, Half Marathon and Marathon distances. All of which I’ve done. I wanted to complete 8 Half Marathons of which I’m on 7 and Cardiff will be my 8th. A few parkrun related ones including getting to 100 runs, volunteering 5 times and getting my overall total to 20 different parkrun events which have all been completed. There are a couple still to tick off with finishing Snowdon Marathon and running 2015K in 2015 which I’m well on course to do both. I’ve now come up with a new challenge with details at the end of this blog.

Richard LJ’s progress

A few of Richards were quite subjective (strengthen ankles, use foam roller, improve flexibility) so only he’ll be able to tell us if those have been achieved. Of the more measureable ones, Richard is on course with finishing every race he’s started, has run a trail half marathon and has paced club members to PB’s. On the still to do list are a 10K PB and get a Half Marathon PB. To be fair, Richard didn’t intend signing up for Snowdon Marathon and had targeted these two PB’s for races that fall during the biggest period of training so a tough ask.

Chris Pratt’s progress

Chris hasn’t just achieved some of this targets, he’s done some several times over and surpassed them by huge margins. His 5K aim was sub 23 which he’s done over a dozen times and has a PB of 20:50. The 10K aim was sub 50 – PB now 46:19. Half Marathon aim was sub 1:55 – PB now 1:41:58. He completed his 50 x 5K challenge back in May albeit with a slight delay due to illness and reached the parkrun 100 club around the same time. He is well on course for 1000 miles in 2015. The two tricky ones are to complete 15 Half Marathons (currently on 8) and run at 11 Welsh parkruns which is the number that existed at the start of the year. Plans are in place for both.

**THE NEW TARGET**

I can’t just relax in the knowledge I’m on course to complete all my targets, and the Kenfig 5K and a couple of other races I didn’t know about earlier in the year have meant a ridiculous feat might be possible…

100 EVENTS IN 2015

I did a list of events I was definitely going to do at the start of 2015 and it amounted to around 80 odd. Throughout the year a few others have popped up that weren’t on the initial list or I did more than I expected so as I added these to list the total nudged over the 90 mark. I’d given some thought to whether 100 was possible earlier in the year but quickly dismissed it as bonkers and not realistic. Then a couple of weeks back Richard LJ posted about some Fell races which being Saturday afternoon races didn’t clash with anything and could add another two or three. I revisited my list which was initially pretty quiet for Oct-Dec and started adding a couple of the Fell races, a couple of cross country fixtures, Pembrey MT10, Porthcawl Lions Boxing Day race.. all of a sudden, it’s on.

Now feel free to re-post this throughout 2016 if it doesn’t happen but my number 1 goal for next year is “DO LESS EVENTS”. I’m never going to get near 100 again so I’m determined to do now the opportunity is there*

*when I say never going to get near 100 again, I mean within 10-15 events of it as I’ve already done my list for 2016 and it already includes 77 events even though I’ve left out loads.

Getting back to this year and I’m currently on 71 events leaving me 29 to do in the next 15 weeks as I’m hoping to complete it on Boxing Day. No doubt I will keep everyone updated on my progress.

A look ahead 

This weekend is reasonably quiet although Dawn is running the Great North Run and Fiona D is running the Aberdare 5K. I’m trying to encourage some parkrun tourism with Caerphilly the venue although I suspect it may just be me and Chris Pratt. There’ll be a blue wave descending on Swansea 10K the week after as I think at least a dozen or more members are attending with even more first timers. Chris Pratt will be doing the Two Tunnels Half Marathon to add another towards his target. September 25-27 is likely to see Cwm Ogwr racking up hundreds of miles between us as this is pencilled in as most of the Snowdon lots final 20+ mile run whilst a few others might be getting in a final 10 miles or so for the Cardiff Half Marathon which is a week later. Hopefully we’ll have hit the 100 member mark and in around 3 weeks time several members will discover whether they have been successful in the London Marathon ballot.

Again, I’m so happy with how the club is growing and developing. More training sessions, more members, more races, more milestones, more firsts, more PB’s, more happy runners. It’s been especially fantastic to see the turnout at local races like Kenfig 5K and the Hilly 4 to the point we’re outnumbering much bigger, more established clubs and really putting Cwm Ogwr on the running map. The club is going from strength to strength and long may it continue.

After the massive turnout at Cardiff 10K and the Hilly 4 at the start of the month, there was no time to take a break with Swansea 10K coming up and yet more big mileage for the Snowdon Marathoners.

 

Saturday 12 Sept – parkruns

 

Richard LJ and Richard Garratt back took different routes running down to parkrun as part of 19-20 mile training runs in what RLJ described as ‘character building weather’. Another member said the rain was practically horizontal in Porthcawl parkrun. It meant PB’s were off the menu again although Lewis Nash did run his first parkrun with the club so a sort of PB although a couple of minutes down on what he has done at Porthcawl prior to joining the club.

 

Only around 20 odd miles away (as the crow flies), me and Chris Pratt were visiting Penallta parkrun in Caerphilly where conditions were almost perfect, if not actually a little warm. We’d both received our parkrun 100 t-shirts that week so this was the first outing in them. As it was only the 12 running of the parkrun I did wonder if we might be the top parkrunners there in terms of number of overall parkruns ran. How wrong I was as we were in the company of the number one parkrun tourist worldwide, Paul Freyne who I’ll come onto later. The course was mostly on tarmac paths with two odd out and back sections, one of which had an incline that was maybe just a bit longer than the one in Porthcawl towards Rest Bay. A small loop at the end included a trail section before going back on the tarmac path for the final mile or so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neil Jones ran at Pontypridd again with a spectacular time of 19:29 – just one second off what he ran in Merthyr Mawr and just two seconds off the club record set by Nick just last month.

 

Sunday 13 September – from a 5K to an Ironman

 

Initially, I thought this was going to be a quiet day for the club but it turned out we have two runners in the Great North Run, another running the Will Burrows 5K in Aberdare, a mountain bike challenge, and the same case of an Ironman event. Fiona Drysdale was the 5K which is normally a 5 mile event run by the Aberdare Running Club in memory of Will Burrows. Dawn Hopkins and Matthew Jones were at the Great North Run. I’d say unsurprisingly we didn’t see them on TV but earlier in the year we did actually spot Kelly in the London Marathon coverage so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. We think Matthew finished in just under 2 hours – I say think because he hasn’t trained with us for a while due to other commitments and there were a few Matthew Jones’s running so hopefully I’ve picked up the correct time if he did run it at all?! What we are more sure of is that relatively new member, Dawn Hopkins ran it in 2 hours 12 minutes which she was very pleased with and really enjoyed the experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, our keen mountain biker, Lorna was over on the Isle of Man for a massive challenge that involved biking from one end of the island to the other – obviously over mountainous, varied terrain. She said it was the ‘hardest thing she’d ever done’ which given she ran a marathon back in April, it obviously goes to show how tough it was. She still enjoyed it though and I get the feeling she may be looking to do something even more challenging in the future. It’s been a pretty amazing sporting year for Lorna with this mountain bike challenge, her first two triathlons and a marathon all within the space of 6 months!

 

I’m sure Lorna won’t mind me saying though that an even bigger challenge laid ahead for Steven Clatworthy on Sunday morning. At 7am, Steven joined around 2,500 athletes to compete in Ironman Wales which starts and finishes in Tenby. For those of you who need reminding an Ironman is a extreme long distance triathlon consisting of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, and a marathon run to finish. Or as I explained it to my wife – it’s like swimming from the Life Centre in Ogmore to Blackmill, then cycling to Monmouth and back, then running to Swansea. Ironman competitions also have several cut off times with ones after the swim, bike and even on the laps of the run. The race has to be completed in 17 hours otherwise you are considered not to have finished. Steven swam the 2.4 miles, (the equivalent of 154 lengths in a 25 meter pool) but with the added difficulty of sea swimming and battling for space amongst hundreds of other swimmers, in 1:16:33. The bike course consists of over 6000 feet of ascent and he completed this in 6:47:31. Now as for the run… it turned out due to injuries and training for the other two disciplines, Steven had not run more than 5 miles this year! He’d also never ran further than a half marathon – and that’s on fresh legs. Despite this and the fatigue of having already been on the go for over 8 hours, he completed the marathon in 5:18:39 for a total time (including transitions) of 13:44:09. A phenomenal effort. He’s already talking about next year as well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 19th – parkruns

 

A smaller than usual turnout at Porthcawl due to a record number of parkrun tourists with members at 5 different parkruns. At Porthcawl Nick got yet another sub 20 time whilst Christie smashed his parkrun PB with a 24:06. Chris Pratt and I ran the Llyn Lech Owain parkrun, Chris Roberts ran at South Manchester, Fiona Drysdale got a career PB with exactly the same time as Christie at the Pontypridd parkrun, whilst Dai Kembery ran his fastest 5K in over a year with a 21:02 at the Great Cornard parkrun.

 

September 20th – Swansea 10K and Bath Two Tunnels HM

 

Another huge turnout at Swansea 10K by Cwm Ogwr with 19 runners in attendance. Heather Garratt was first Cwm Ogwr runner across the line and not only smashed her own 10K PB but set a new female club record with a 47:51 beating the previous record with had stood for over 2 years by a massive 42 seconds. Christie Coleman continued his amazing streak of PB’s with a 49:11 with Kelly a few seconds back. Richard LJ and Richard Garratt both had niggley injuries that meant PB attempts weren’t on whilst Rob Pritchard just missed out on his time he set at Cardiff a couple of weeks previous. Dawn Hopkins and Emma Loyns set excellent PB’s at 56 minutes whist Gail got her sub 1 hour time having just missed out in Cardiff. Ceri Raffill got a perfect sub 1 hour time with 59:59 whilst Jackie Lewis was just outside the hour mark. There were several other PB’s including Natalie Griffiths, Alica Thomas, Karen Burgess-Hopkins and Kayley Sullivan who was running her first 10K.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chris Pratt ran the Bath Two Tunnels HM in 1:51 using it as a Snowdon training run as well as clocking up another HM in his attempt to reach his target of 15 this year.

 

September 26th – parkrun

 

After having members at 5 different parkruns the week before, it was only Porthcawl this week. Nick equalled his own club record with 19:27 and was nearly 3 minutes in front of our next finisher, Dave Evans. Christie smashed his PB again with a 23:54 meaning he has knocked 50 seconds of his 5K time in just 2 weeks and 2 minutes 50 seconds in just the past 2 months. Christie had some gentle encouragement shall we say from Aled who was making a rare appearance to combine parkrun with running back to Nantymoel for his marathon training. Dai Kembery was also running back home to the Garw after parkrun including a massive hill at the end to replicate Snowdon elevation. I ran to parkrun with a detour to Nantymoel meaning a 6.20am start and a total mileage of 22 miles. Back at parkrun, Liz Davis also got a new PB knocking a huge 27 seconds off her previous best. Liz has improved her parkrun time by nearly 2 minutes this year.

 

September 27th – Forest of Dean HM and Neath Sprint Triathlon

 

Chris Pratt was in HM action again running his 10th of the year at the Forest of Dean. Despite clocking up several more before this year, this was his first trail HM and again was being used as a Snowdon training run whilst clocking up another HM towards his target of 15 in 2015.

 

Meanwhile, our Pontypridd parkrun members Neil Jones, Neil Harris and Chris Williams as well as Sian Tossell were all competing in their first triathlons with the Neath Valley Sprint event. The triathlon is perfect for first timers with the 400m swim in the pool, followed by a 22K bike and a 3K run.

 

Parkrun Tourism

 

I have written about this before with me keen to do the odd spot of parkrun tourism. My total is currently 22 with 10 in Wales and 12 in England. This is pretty good and I might even be the top parkrun tourist of the ones who call Porthcawl parkrun their home run. However, there are currently just over 1000 people who have done more, and some who’ve done significantly more. Over 200 people have done at least 50 different parkruns whilst around 60 people have notched up 100 different venues, so it’s much more than just a handful of people who are parkrun tourist addicts. Then you get to the proper bonkers ones with 11 people having done over 150 and the top 3 having done over 200 DIFFERENT parkrun venues. There are even a few who refuse to do the same parkrun twice and Kelly shared an article a while ago about someone who was doing their 150 parkrun at their 150 different venue.

 

Top of the list is Paul Freyne who unbeknownst to me and Chris was at Caerphilly running his 262th different parkrun out of his 306 run total. I believe he lives in London as the only parkrun he’s done more frequently is Bushy parkrun which was where parkrun began over 10 years ago. Along with dozens of other parkrun tourist addicts as I would call them, Paul will travel hundreds of miles to do a parkrun he hasn’t done before and arrange holidays to visit ones in other countries. Just looking at the last couple of months and the sort of distance and time travelled we have…

 

12 Sept – Penallta (Caerphilly) – 300 mile, 5 hour round trip

5 Sept – Gadebridge Park (London) – 70 mile, 2 hour round trip

30 Aug – Harwich (near Ipswich) – 230 mile, 4 hour round trip

23 Aug – Brentwood (London) – 120 mile, 2 and a half hours

16 Aug – Market Harborough (Leicestershire) – 200 mile, 4 hours

9 Aug – Kolobrzeg (POLAND)

2 Aug – Lubin (POLAND)

25 July – Barclay (London) – 120 mile, 2 and a half hours

18 July – Hove Promenade (Brighton) – 120 mile, 2 and a half hours

 

Other venues in the past 6 months include another 4 parkruns in Poland, 5 hour round trips to Barry Island and Evesham parkruns, an 8 hour round trip to a parkrun near Manchester and also a trip to Derry in Northern Ireland. He’s done 30 parkruns outside of the UK (most of which in Poland). In case you’re wondering, he actually did the first Porthcawl parkrun. parkrun is actually growing so quickly, it’s very unlikely he will run out of parkruns to attend although the distances to travel might start getting even more bonkers.

 

Future parkrun tourism

 

One of my 2016 aims is now to get to 30 different parkruns which would get me on the Worldwide ‘most events’ page rather than just the UK one which you need to have completed 20. Over the past few months another 5 parkruns have popped up which are convenient for me ‘on the way’ to visit my in-laws in Kidderminster whilst Neath, Cardiff Bay and Swansea parkruns should all be up and running by the end of the year.

 

One of Chris Pratts goals for 2015 was to run all the Welsh parkruns. Although this wasn’t one of my goals, I was keen to tag to along even if it meant repeating some I’d done before. A very good start to the year as we capitalised on the only day of the year you can register two parkruns with Cardiff and Newport on New Years Day. The first Porthcawl aprkrun of the year was on the 3 of January so Chris had done 3 already. However, with a crazy schedule of races and training it was May before we added Barry Island and then Bryn Bach in June. I’ve been reminding Chris quite frequently of this challenge as at the beginning of September he was still only on 5 out of a possible 13. With two in North Wales, another being a good couple of hours drive (Aberystwyth) plus Colby in Pembrokeshire, it’s a big ask I’ll admit at this point I didn’t think it would happen. However, with a couple of requests from myself, Chris has drawn up a schedule to hopefully still achieve them all by the end of the year and might even sneak in one of the new ones as well. You might not see him at Porthcawl much.

 

Chairman’s Runner of the Month – Heather Garratt

 

Very tempting to choose Christie for a second month in a row, but Heather has also had an amazing month. Two 10K PB’s at Cardiff and Swansea including a new female club record. What makes this even more impressive is that this is whilst training for her first marathon so the weekend before Cardiff 10K involved an 18 mile run, the weekend in between the Cardiff and Swansea included a 20 miler and at the time of writing this Heather is due to complete a 22 mile run. Impressive stuff Mrs Garratt.

 

Looking ahead

 

Next week see’s another huge turnout at the Cardiff HM with several different approaches to it. I’ve offered to pace Lorna to a sub 1:50 time with Christie likely to be around that time as well. Chris Pratt is combining the run with his longest Snowdon training run and aims to do around 8-9 miles BEFORE running the Half Marathon with Richard LJ also looking to do some extra mileage. Other Snowdon entrants are likely to be taking it easy and using it as a training run although there might be the odd one or two that decide to go for it. There’s plenty of non-Snowdon entrants who will looking for personal bests whilst I believe there’s also one or two first time Half Marathoners.

 

There’s now less than 4 weeks until Snowdon Marathon and this week has seen several complete their longest runs with Dai K, Aled, Richard LJ, Richard and Heather Garratt, and I all doing 20+ mile runs. There has been some bad news with Kelly breaking her little toe after hitting it on her spin bike. She has been told to rest for two weeks but is determined to still do the marathon and I’m sure will get lots of support from the rest of us. Before then it’s worth noting the first Gwent Cross Country League fixture is on Newbridge Fields on October 11th so hopefully we’ll see a few trying out their first XC event.

 

Next week also see’s the London Marathon ballot results. Exciting times ahead.

After the massive turnout at Cardiff 10K and the Hilly 4 at the start of the month, there was no time to take a break with Swansea 10K coming up and yet more big mileage for the Snowdon Marathoners.

 

Saturday 12 Sept – parkruns

 

Richard LJ and Richard Garratt back took different routes running down to parkrun as part of 19-20 mile training runs in what RLJ described as ‘character building weather’. Another member said the rain was practically horizontal in Porthcawl parkrun. It meant PB’s were off the menu again although Lewis Nash did run his first parkrun with the club so a sort of PB although a couple of minutes down on what he has done at Porthcawl prior to joining the club.

 

Only around 20 odd miles away (as the crow flies), me and Chris Pratt were visiting Penallta parkrun in Caerphilly where conditions were almost perfect, if not actually a little warm. We’d both received our parkrun 100 t-shirts that week so this was the first outing in them. As it was only the 12 running of the parkrun I did wonder if we might be the top parkrunners there in terms of number of overall parkruns ran. How wrong I was as we were in the company of the number one parkrun tourist worldwide, Paul Freyne who I’ll come onto later. The course was mostly on tarmac paths with two odd out and back sections, one of which had an incline that was maybe just a bit longer than the one in Porthcawl towards Rest Bay. A small loop at the end included a trail section before going back on the tarmac path for the final mile or so.

 

 

 

Neil Jones ran at Pontypridd again with a spectacular time of 19:29 – just one second off what he ran in Merthyr Mawr and just two seconds off the club record set by Nick just last month.

 

Sunday 13 September – from a 5K to an Ironman

 

Initially, I thought this was going to be a quiet day for the club but it turned out we have two runners in the Great North Run, another running the Will Burrows 5K in Aberdare, a mountain bike challenge, and the same case of an Ironman event. Fiona Drysdale was the 5K which is normally a 5 mile event run by the Aberdare Running Club in memory of Will Burrows. Dawn Hopkins and Matthew Jones were at the Great North Run. I’d say unsurprisingly we didn’t see them on TV but earlier in the year we did actually spot Kelly in the London Marathon coverage so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. We think Matthew finished in just under 2 hours – I say think because he hasn’t trained with us for a while due to other commitments and there were a few Matthew Jones’s running so hopefully I’ve picked up the correct time if he did run it at all?! What we are more sure of is that relatively new member, Dawn Hopkins ran it in 2 hours 12 minutes which she was very pleased with and really enjoyed the experience.

 

Meanwhile, our keen mountain biker, Lorna was over on the Isle of Man for a massive challenge that involved biking from one end of the island to the other – obviously over mountainous, varied terrain. She said it was the ‘hardest thing she’d ever done’ which given she ran a marathon back in April, it obviously goes to show how tough it was. She still enjoyed it though and I get the feeling she may be looking to do something even more challenging in the future. It’s been a pretty amazing sporting year for Lorna with this mountain bike challenge, her first two triathlons and a marathon all within the space of 6 months!

 

I’m sure Lorna won’t mind me saying though that an even bigger challenge laid ahead for Steven Clatworthy on Sunday morning. At 7am, Steven joined around 2,500 athletes to compete in Ironman Wales which starts and finishes in Tenby. For those of you who need reminding an Ironman is a extreme long distance triathlon consisting of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, and a marathon run to finish. Or as I explained it to my wife – it’s like swimming from the Life Centre in Ogmore to Blackmill, then cycling to Monmouth and back, then running to Swansea. Ironman competitions also have several cut off times with ones after the swim, bike and even on the laps of the run. The race has to be completed in 17 hours otherwise you are considered not to have finished. Steven swam the 2.4 miles, (the equivalent of 154 lengths in a 25 meter pool) but with the added difficulty of sea swimming and battling for space amongst hundreds of other swimmers, in 1:16:33. The bike course consists of over 6000 feet of ascent and he completed this in 6:47:31. Now as for the run… it turned out due to injuries and training for the other two disciplines, Steven had not run more than 5 miles this year! He’d also never ran further than a half marathon – and that’s on fresh legs. Despite this and the fatigue of having already been on the go for over 8 hours, he completed the marathon in 5:18:39 for a total time (including transitions) of 13:44:09. A phenomenal effort. He’s already talking about next year as well!

 

 

 

September 19th – parkruns

 

A smaller than usual turnout at Porthcawl due to a record number of parkrun tourists with members at 5 different parkruns. At Porthcawl Nick got yet another sub 20 time whilst Christie smashed his parkrun PB with a 24:06. Chris Pratt and I ran the Llyn Lech Owain parkrun, Chris Roberts ran at South Manchester, Fiona Drysdale got a career PB with exactly the same time as Christie at the Pontypridd parkrun, whilst Dai Kembery ran his fastest 5K in over a year with a 21:02 at the Great Cornard parkrun.

 

September 20th – Swansea 10K and Bath Two Tunnels HM

 

Another huge turnout at Swansea 10K by Cwm Ogwr with 19 runners in attendance. Heather Garratt was first Cwm Ogwr runner across the line and not only smashed her own 10K PB but set a new female club record with a 47:51 beating the previous record with had stood for over 2 years by a massive 42 seconds. Christie Coleman continued his amazing streak of PB’s with a 49:11 with Kelly a few seconds back. Richard LJ and Richard Garratt both had niggley injuries that meant PB attempts weren’t on whilst Rob Pritchard just missed out on his time he set at Cardiff a couple of weeks previous. Dawn Hopkins and Emma Loyns set excellent PB’s at 56 minutes whist Gail got her sub 1 hour time having just missed out in Cardiff. Ceri Raffill got a perfect sub 1 hour time with 59:59 whilst Jackie Lewis was just outside the hour mark. There were several other PB’s including Natalie Griffiths, Alica Thomas, Karen Burgess-Hopkins and Kayley Sullivan who was running her first 10K.

 

Chris Pratt ran the Bath Two Tunnels HM in 1:51 using it as a Snowdon training run as well as clocking up another HM in his attempt to reach his target of 15 this year.

 

September 26th – parkrun

 

After having members at 5 different parkruns the week before, it was only Porthcawl this week. Nick equalled his own club record with 19:27 and was nearly 3 minutes in front of our next finisher, Dave Evans. Christie smashed his PB again with a 23:54 meaning he has knocked 50 seconds of his 5K time in just 2 weeks and 2 minutes 50 seconds in just the past 2 months. Christie had some gentle encouragement shall we say from Aled who was making a rare appearance to combine parkrun with running back to Nantymoel for his marathon training. Dai Kembery was also running back home to the Garw after parkrun including a massive hill at the end to replicate Snowdon elevation. I ran to parkrun with a detour to Nantymoel meaning a 6.20am start and a total mileage of 22 miles. Back at parkrun, Liz Davis also got a new PB knocking a huge 27 seconds off her previous best. Liz has improved her parkrun time by nearly 2 minutes this year.

 

September 27th – Forest of Dean HM and Neath Sprint Triathlon

 

Chris Pratt was in HM action again running his 10th of the year at the Forest of Dean. Despite clocking up several more before this year, this was his first trail HM and again was being used as a Snowdon training run whilst clocking up another HM towards his target of 15 in 2015.

 

Meanwhile, our Pontypridd parkrun members Neil Jones, Neil Harris and Chris Williams as well as Sian Tossell were all competing in their first triathlons with the Neath Valley Sprint event. The triathlon is perfect for first timers with the 400m swim in the pool, followed by a 22K bike and a 3K run.

 

Parkrun Tourism

 

I have written about this before with me keen to do the odd spot of parkrun tourism. My total is currently 22 with 10 in Wales and 12 in England. This is pretty good and I might even be the top parkrun tourist of the ones who call Porthcawl parkrun their home run. However, there are currently just over 1000 people who have done more, and some who’ve done significantly more. Over 200 people have done at least 50 different parkruns whilst around 60 people have notched up 100 different venues, so it’s much more than just a handful of people who are parkrun tourist addicts. Then you get to the proper bonkers ones with 11 people having done over 150 and the top 3 having done over 200 DIFFERENT parkrun venues. There are even a few who refuse to do the same parkrun twice and Kelly shared an article a while ago about someone who was doing their 150 parkrun at their 150 different venue.

 

Top of the list is Paul Freyne who unbeknownst to me and Chris was at Caerphilly running his 262th different parkrun out of his 306 run total. I believe he lives in London as the only parkrun he’s done more frequently is Bushy parkrun which was where parkrun began over 10 years ago. Along with dozens of other parkrun tourist addicts as I would call them, Paul will travel hundreds of miles to do a parkrun he hasn’t done before and arrange holidays to visit ones in other countries. Just looking at the last couple of months and the sort of distance and time travelled we have…

 

12 Sept – Penallta (Caerphilly) – 300 mile, 5 hour round trip

5 Sept – Gadebridge Park (London) – 70 mile, 2 hour round trip

30 Aug – Harwich (near Ipswich) – 230 mile, 4 hour round trip

23 Aug – Brentwood (London) – 120 mile, 2 and a half hours

16 Aug – Market Harborough (Leicestershire) – 200 mile, 4 hours

9 Aug – Kolobrzeg (POLAND)

2 Aug – Lubin (POLAND)

25 July – Barclay (London) – 120 mile, 2 and a half hours

18 July – Hove Promenade (Brighton) – 120 mile, 2 and a half hours

 

Other venues in the past 6 months include another 4 parkruns in Poland, 5 hour round trips to Barry Island and Evesham parkruns, an 8 hour round trip to a parkrun near Manchester and also a trip to Derry in Northern Ireland. He’s done 30 parkruns outside of the UK (most of which in Poland). In case you’re wondering, he actually did the first Porthcawl parkrun. parkrun is actually growing so quickly, it’s very unlikely he will run out of parkruns to attend although the distances to travel might start getting even more bonkers.

 

Future parkrun tourism

 

One of my 2016 aims is now to get to 30 different parkruns which would get me on the Worldwide ‘most events’ page rather than just the UK one which you need to have completed 20. Over the past few months another 5 parkruns have popped up which are convenient for me ‘on the way’ to visit my in-laws in Kidderminster whilst Neath, Cardiff Bay and Swansea parkruns should all be up and running by the end of the year.

 

One of Chris Pratts goals for 2015 was to run all the Welsh parkruns. Although this wasn’t one of my goals, I was keen to tag to along even if it meant repeating some I’d done before. A very good start to the year as we capitalised on the only day of the year you can register two parkruns with Cardiff and Newport on New Years Day. The first Porthcawl aprkrun of the year was on the 3 of January so Chris had done 3 already. However, with a crazy schedule of races and training it was May before we added Barry Island and then Bryn Bach in June. I’ve been reminding Chris quite frequently of this challenge as at the beginning of September he was still only on 5 out of a possible 13. With two in North Wales, another being a good couple of hours drive (Aberystwyth) plus Colby in Pembrokeshire, it’s a big ask I’ll admit at this point I didn’t think it would happen. However, with a couple of requests from myself, Chris has drawn up a schedule to hopefully still achieve them all by the end of the year and might even sneak in one of the new ones as well. You might not see him at Porthcawl much.

 

Chairman’s Runner of the Month – Heather Garratt

 

Very tempting to choose Christie for a second month in a row, but Heather has also had an amazing month. Two 10K PB’s at Cardiff and Swansea including a new female club record. What makes this even more impressive is that this is whilst training for her first marathon so the weekend before Cardiff 10K involved an 18 mile run, the weekend in between the Cardiff and Swansea included a 20 miler and at the time of writing this Heather is due to complete a 22 mile run. Impressive stuff Mrs Garratt.

 

Looking ahead

 

Next week see’s another huge turnout at the Cardiff HM with several different approaches to it. I’ve offered to pace Lorna to a sub 1:50 time with Christie likely to be around that time as well. Chris Pratt is combining the run with his longest Snowdon training run and aims to do around 8-9 miles BEFORE running the Half Marathon with Richard LJ also looking to do some extra mileage. Other Snowdon entrants are likely to be taking it easy and using it as a training run although there might be the odd one or two that decide to go for it. There’s plenty of non-Snowdon entrants who will looking for personal bests whilst I believe there’s also one or two first time Half Marathoners.

 

There’s now less than 4 weeks until Snowdon Marathon and this week has seen several complete their longest runs with Dai K, Aled, Richard LJ, Richard and Heather Garratt, and I all doing 20+ mile runs. There has been some bad news with Kelly breaking her little toe after hitting it on her spin bike. She has been told to rest for two weeks but is determined to still do the marathon and I’m sure will get lots of support from the rest of us. Before then it’s worth noting the first Gwent Cross Country League fixture is on Newbridge Fields on October 11th so hopefully we’ll see a few trying out their first XC event.

 

Next week also see’s the London Marathon ballot results. Exciting times ahead.

Another month, another load of races, parkruns and a couple of triathlons. We’ve also seen the introduction of a brand new club session on a Wednesday starting at Pandy Park meaning we now have 5 sessions per week plus a regular 20 parkrunners on a Saturday. I commented on a post recently that it was less than 2 years ago we regularly only had 5 or less turning up to training and there a couple of occasions where I was only one who turned up and the same happened to Nick. Now we have up to 20 (sometimes more) turning up to each of the 5 sessions plus around the same attendance at parkrun. That’s without even mentioning races! The membership numbers continue to steadily increase and we’re now into the 90’s. Hopefully if the London Marathon criteria for club places doesn’t change and we hit 100 over the next few weeks then we could be allocated three places for the 2016 race.

 

1st August – parkrun

 

The month started with the second 100 club celebration in as many weeks and this time it was my turn. I’ve already done a blog on my parkrun tourism so I’ll just keep it to the stats this time.. 21 different events, 78 parkruns at Porthcawl, 125 weeks from first to 100th pakrun and volunteered 10 times. After a slow(ish) start, the weekly parkrun fix really kicked in back in April 2014 and since then I’ve only missed 3 parkruns – one the day my twins were born, one due to illness and one being sensible and not running the day before Manchester Marathon. I think Nick started the tradition of having to ‘go for a PB’ on a milestone parkrun when he ran a PB on his 50th. Chris Pratt smashed his PB in his 100th parkrun this year, whilst Chris Roberts and Richard Garratt got PB’s on their 50th. The pressure was on but I also did it with a parkrun PB of 20:35 knocking 18 seconds off the time set back in March. Not far behind was the ever improving Chris Pratt with his first sub 21 run of 20:59. His aim at the start of the year was to get under 23 minutes! With Nick in the low 20’s and Dave Evans just behind me, it meant we had 4 sub 21 runners. Dai K ran a seasons best of 21:25 and there was a rare appearance from Aled Hughes a minute or so further back after he’d run part of the way to parkrun with Kevin. Christie Coleman set another PB whilst Jonathan Edwards ran his quickest parkrun in almost 2 years. A massive turnout of 24 runners with Kelly making another cake to celebrate the 100 milestone. Fiona Drysdale was our only parkrun tourist and clocked a seasons best 5K time at Newport parkrun.

At the start with a fellow 100 clubber

Sprint finish with Dai Evans

Another ‘secret’ event was going on whilst I was celebrating my 100th parkrun. Fiona, Lorna and Helen have been missing from club training nights for a while with the occasional post about 1 mile open water swims and a few swim, bike, run sessions. Well we know why now as they were off training for the Wales Triathlon. Second triathlon for both Fiona and Helen this year whilst it was a triathlon debut for Lorna. Excellent effort by all.

The Cwm Ogwr Tri Club

August 2nd – Brecon 10 miler

I think a combination of club championship points, guaranteed PB’s in most cases and it being a good Snowdon training run contributed to 12 members turning up for this one. 10 milers haven’t been very popular with only 8 club members having run an official 10 mile race before this one. Me, Nick and Dai K all had times to beat whilst it was a guaranteed PB for the rest. The race starts with a couple of laps of Brecon Athletics Track before heading out through country lanes with a loop before doubling back for the last 3-4 miles. Undulating throughout – no major hills, but definitely enough steady inclines to just knock a few seconds off the pace.

Unsurprisingly, Nick was the first Cwm Ogwr runner across the line in1 hour 12 minutes and I was next with a 1:15 – unfortunately both a couple of minutes slower than our best times. Dai Kembery decided to run with the on-form Chris Pratt with Chris sneaking in front with a few meters to go with a mid 1:18 finish for both which was good enough for Dai to beat his previous best whilst it was a brilliant first 10 mile time for Chris. I’d mentioned before the race that everyone should be looking to beat their half marathon pace and Chris certainly did that and would arguably be on for a 1:42 HM time on a flat course (his PB at the time was 1:47). New member Martin Beard ran his first race with us clocking a solid 1:26 with Antony Lewis next up with 1:27. Both suffered significant injuries in their respective marathons this year and are getting back to full fitness so great times considering. The Garratt’s apparently swapped positions several times throughout the race and came onto the track for the final 300m side by side. Richard managed to find an extra kick and finished a few seconds ahead in the end with both in the low 1:28’s. Heather was just 2minutes outside the women’s club record. Christie Coleman ran an excellent sub 90 minute time which suggests a sub 2 hour half marathon could be on the cards soon. Steve Riddler posted a 1:31 whilst Liz was very pleased with a 1:37. Gail Pritchard was our final runner coming in at 1:50 with the rest of us all cheering her across the line. Gail’s brother Rob, who joined the club a week or so after the event, also ran and finished in 1:36.

End of Brecon 10

August 7th – The Murder Mile

Me, Chris, Richard LJ and Nick went along to what Runners World ranked as ‘one of the toughest races in the UK’. It’s only 1 mile… but it’s entirely uphill with 669 feet of elevation (see graph below). To strike fear into the runners, you have to walk down the hill first to get from registration to the start so you know whats coming, and it’s mostly very steep. The course record was over 8 minutes and set by a runner capable of a 4:40 mile on the flat. Nick who had done the race in 2014 was first CORC member across the line beating his previous time by a few seconds with a sub 12 minute finish. Unbeknownst to me, there was a very close battle for next Cwm Ogwr finisher. I was very pleased not to have walked any of the course overcoming several urges to do so when with 200m to go, Chris Pratt came striding passed me! He finished in 12:25 whilst I clocked 12:34 in our first attempts. Richard LJ had run the event with Nick last year but a calf injury meant he was slightly off his course best and came in at 14:47.

Murder Mile Elevation

Post Murder Mile beers

August 8th – parkruns

Even with a few regulars away (Dai C, Chris R, Dai and Jayne K, Kelly and Richard G) we still hit the 20 runners mark. A very busy Porthcawl parkrun with a second best ever attendance of 263. Me, Aled and Chris P ran down to parkrun clocking 15-17 miles each including the parkrun itself. Nick beat his own record for consecutive parkruns with his 42nd week in arow – all of which at Porthcawl and was first Cwm Ogwr Runner across the line as he has been in so many of those 42. There was a third PB in as many weeks for Christie Coleman and a massive well done to Ceri Raffill who beat her year-long standing previous best. Shelley Smithson ran her first parkrun since training with the club in a speedy 26:07 putting her amongst some of our fastest female runners this year.

Meanwhile over at Cardiff parkrun, Neil Harris set another PB with a 19:46 for his third sub 20 time since joining the club. Prior to this year the club had 12 sub 20 times run by 5 members of the club which has now increased to 25 sub 20 times run by 9 different members. Neil’s time was the 11th fastest 5K by a Cwm Ogwr member.

 

August 15 – parkruns

 

Turned up to hear rumours of a special guest appearance by double triathlon World Champion and double Olympian Helen Jenkins. Funnily enough I decided to start a little nearer the front than usual and there she was! I have to admit to being a little starstruck given I’d gone up to London especially to see her race in the Olympics back in 2012. The parkrun itself was interesting. Both Chris Pratt and myself had said we weren’t ‘going for it’ after recent efforts but ended up within a couple of seconds of each other for the whole parkrun with Chris on for a PB. I started edging nearer in the final straight but Heather Garratt spoiled my surprise attack by shouting to Chris that I was on his tail. I’m almost positive Chris would have found something extra had I managed to get alongside him. In the end it was yet another PB for Chris (20:50) knocking a further 9 seconds off his best set 2 weeks previous whilst my 20:52 was my second best parkrun time. Nick and Dave were just ahead with the four of us finishing just 27 seconds apart. Not so further back these days, Christie set his 4th parkrun PB in as many weeks knocking a huge 39 seconds off last weeks effort for a 24:44. A minute behind him was Shelley Smithson who will have some of our fastest female club members looking over their shoulders with a 25:43. Katie Wood ran her first parkrun of the year with a PB whilst new member Sian Llewellyn-Goring was just a few seconds off her overall parkrun PB in her first since joining the club. Richard Garratt, Kelly Owen and Fiona Drysdale were all close to personal or seasons bests whilst Denise Bradley volunteered to be the 30 minute pacer doing an excellent job in finishing in 29:57. Over in Colby, Ann Davies finally did her 50 parkrun having been on 49 for the last 3 weeks.

 

The end of the epic battle between the ‘not going for it’ pair

Cwm Ogwr runners with Olympian Helen Jenkins

August 16 – Afan Argoed Half Marathon, Cheddar Gorge HM & Tuska Triathlon

The Afan Argoed Half Marathon has been run for several years as a club championship race between Port Talbot Harriers and Brackla Harriers. In previous years it’s mostly just been members of their clubs with one or two guests. Last year me, Nick and Lorna went along and it seemed there were a few more guests and this year it was advertised as an open invitation to all running clubs. The event is free with an accurately measured course and timing – amazing. The only downside is if you get a PB,it’s not going to show up on Run Britain / Power of 10 but most importantly, it will on the Cwm Ogwr stats.

Me, Chris, Nick and Christie went along. Yet again me and Chris said the usual pre-race ‘I’m not going for it’ and ‘it’s just a training run for Snowdon’. I don’t know about him, but I honestly mean it at the time! We started reasonably far back albeit with only 80 odd runners in total. Under normal circumstances I might keep up with Nick for the first half a mile on a good day and up to this point Chris decided to come along as well (because clearly we’re not going for it?!). Chris decided the pace was a bit too hot having said about aiming for 8 minute miles which would give him a 1:44-1:45 finish time which he felt was within his reach and would still knock a couple of minutes off his PB. I forgot to start my Garmin and only got signal after 0.4 miles so was a bit lost as to what sort of splits I was doing although as I’ve said before, I sometimes find I run better that way. I had no idea what sort of time Nick was going for having run a PB of 1:32 back in March, but ‘only’ a 1:39 a few weeks ago in Swansea (albeit with a cold). The miles ticked by and I even went passed him for a couple of seconds at 4 miles and assumed he must have been more on the 1:39 pace. A check of the watch at 5 miles confused the hell out of me and I went from thinking I was on for a massive PB, to ‘no, I’m way outside’ to.. ‘well I just don’t know’. Another check once my watch actually said 5 miles indicated the PB was on. At around 7 miles I pulled up alongside Nick again and he injected a bit a speed to open up a 5-10 second gap. I felt good and knew that actually the first half was mostly incline (as can be seen from the elevation chart below) and apart from a bit at the end, it was mostly flat or slightly downhill for the remaining miles. I’d decided I’d next check my watch at mile 10 and almost fainted when I not only seen I’d just run a 6:40 mile(!?) but also my 10 mile split was 1:11:40 – that’s 2 minutes quicker than my 10 mile PB and also meant I could afford 8 minute miles for the final 3 miles and still get a PB.

 

Of course, the goal changes at that point and you want to get every second out of it you can – who knows when this opportunity will arise again –  could be the next half marathon, might be never. Nick was still between 5-10 seconds in front and I’m massively grateful as I’m certain I wouldn’t have run as well had he not been there. Every time he started edging further away was a timely indicator that maybe I was just slowing a bit and I’d make sure I maintained the gap. I thought I seen Nick holding his side indicating the dreaded stitch and at mile 12 he had to stop dead in his tracks. I shouted at him to keep going mainly for selfish reasons as he was an amazing unintentional pacer but I was gutted for him as he was on for one of his best ever times. The final mile agonisingly includes a couple of inclines but I still wanted to give it 100% to get every second I could. The final straight is a good 200-300m long and seemed to take forever.

 

Crossing the line was amazing but strange as I knew I had a PB but had no idea by how much because of the Garmin issue. In the end I was given 1:34:09 – over 3 and a half minutes off my PB despite this being my 24th half marathon and me being convinced if I ever beat my previous best again, it would be a matter of seconds not minutes! Nick came in 2 minutes later which still beat the time he did the previous year despite the stop at mile 12. We knew from the turnaround point that Chris and Christie were going well so it waited to see what sort of times they ended up with. Chris came in at 1:41:58 knocking an incredible 6 minutes off his previous best set in Swansea just 2 months ago. Christie’s improvement is mind-blowing – on a super flat Swansea course he ran 2:02 but he annihilated that time with a 1:50:30.

 

Elevation profile

Team photo after the race

Meanwhile, Martin was running the Cheddar Gorge Half Marathon which is ranked amongst the toughest in the UK. An off road course with over 2000 feet of elevation with steep hills throughout – quite a few of which at 10-15% gradient. There’s actually a 21% incline right in the middle of it. He completed the course in 2:32 having completed a 10K obstacle course in Bristol the previous day.

 

For Lorna and Fiona there was another triathlon. The Tuska Sprint Triathlon is organised by Pencoed Tri Club and involves a 750m swim from the lifeboat ramp in Porthcawl, followed by a 20k bike with a 5K run which is 90% the same as parkrun course. Unfortunately Fiona struggled on the mass swim start and ended up withdrawing from the race. Meanwhile Lorna who hadn’t done a triathlon just 16 days previous completed her second of the month. I’m sure Fiona will bounce back with some big plans for 2016 whilst Lorna definitely has the triathlon bug but is concentrating on a mountain bike challenge event and getting back to running regularly over the next couple of months.

 

Never stop improving

 

This year has already seen amazing progress by literally dozens of members but I thought it was worth focussing on a few just to show the incredible improvements than can be made whether it be in just a few months or consistently over a few years…

 

Christie Coleman – the super-quick improver (Apr 2015 – present)

 

First 5K: 28:16 (April 2015)

Current PB: 24:44

 

First HM: 02:02:42 (June 2015)

Current PB: 01:50:30

 

Christie has also set PB’s at 10K and 10 miles. His PB at Afan Argoed is his 5th PB in 16 days!

 

Chris Pratt – the steady improver turned speedy improver

 

First 5K time: 27:22 (April 2013)

Best as at April 2015: 23:42

Current PB: 20:50

First 10K time: 56:17 (July 2012)

Best as at April 2015: 51:06

Current PB: 49:04

First HM time: 02:03:18 (Feb 2013)

Best as at April 2015: 1:56:46

Current PB: 1:41:58

 

Chris has also got PB’s at 5 miles, 10K and 10 miles this year all whilst doing more events than ever and has already beat his yearly mileage for 2014.

 

Nick Harris – the consistent improver

First 5K: 23:15 (Aug 2013)

Current PB: 19:38

 

First 5 mile: 43:05 (May 2013)

Current PB: 33:37

 

First HM: 02:02:30 (Mar 2013)

Current PB: 01:32:07

 

First Marathon: 04:25:50 (Oct 2003)

Second Marathon: 04:07:57 (Apr 2014)

Third Marathon: 03:50:54 (July 2014)

Current PB: 03:40:56

Nick also has 5 mile and 10 mile PB’s this year and holds the record for most overall PB’s since joining the club.

Gareth Jenkins – the long term improver

 

First 5K: 24:44 (May 2011)

Frist Parkrun: 22:26 (Mar 2013)

Current PB: 20:27

 

First HM: 2:09:37 (Oct 2010)

End of 2011: 2:03:08

End of 2012: 1:49:14

End of 2013: 1:38:03

Current PB: 1:34:09

 

First Marathon: 05:04:08 (April 2011)

Second Marathon: 04:31:54 (April 2014)

Current PB: 03:50:26

 

I just need a 10K PB to complete the set having got 5K, 5 mile, 10 mile, Half Marathon and Marathon PB’s this year.

 

Elsewhere there are loads of equally good examples – Chris Roberts 25 parkrun PB’s or Jayne Kembery who has PB’d at nearly every parkrun ran so far. Kelly was a 2 hour plus half marathon runner before joining the club and is now down to 1:47 and dozens of members made huge improvements this year. Plus I think it’s just a matter of time before we see more stats like this with so many having only recently ran their first 5K’s, 10K’s, Half Marathons or Marathons.

 

Club Championship update

 

I did suggest in a previous blog that this was pretty much done and dusted with Richard LJ and Kelly odds on for the titles but after Brecon 10 miler, it appears it’s not so clear cut and makes the remaining fixtures very interesting (Cardiff 10K, Richard Burton 10K, Pembrey 10 miler and Pudding Race).

 

Men’s standings

 

Gareth Jenkins 156 (yet to score in the 10K category)

Richard LJ 150 (yet to score in the 10 mile category)

Nick Harris 139 (yet to score in the 10K category)

 

Women’s standings

 

Liz Davis 119 (yet to score in the 10K or off road category)

Heather Garratt 110 (yet to score in the 10K or off road category)

Kelly Owen 110 (yet to score in the 10K or 10 mile category)

 

I should point out if you are not one of the 6 mentioned above, it’s still possible to win. In fact, even if you are on zero points youcould still win as there’s still races left in each of the categories.

 

Still to come in August

 

Yet more parkrun celebrations with Nick’s 100th and Steve Riddlers 50th over the next couple of weekends. Bank Holiday weekend includes the CPR challenge, Severn Bridge Half Marathon and the South Wales Trail Half Marathon. Expect more PB’s, more members and more happy runners in the next instalment.

 

Lots to catch up on with parkrun milestones, PB’s and races galore. The Snowdon Marathon lot are racking up the mileage with most having done up to 20 mile runs. As it’s Snowdon we’re training for, we of course need to include an incline or two so I’ve posted two of the most bonkers elevation profiles below.

Aled Hughes 21 miler

Chris Pratt and I – 20 miler

There’s also plenty of long runs from those signed up to Cardiff Half Marathon in just over three weeks time. Zero to Hero / 5K Masters club continues to go from strength to strength with more new faces practically every week and many of which are progressing to midweek sessions. Club membership continues to grow and we are now on the brink of welcoming our 100 member which in turn could secure us a third London Marathon place.

August 22nd – parkruns

Another parkrun, another milestone. This time it was Nick’s 100th parkrun. Determined to ‘go for it’ he even had a top pacer in Kevin to help attack his parkrun club record of 19:38. In the end Kevin couldn’t keep up with the speedy Mr Harris who not only got a PB but beat the overall 5K club record by one second with a 19:27. Fiona somewhat unwillingly ended up as an ideal pacer for Denise with both getting PB’s of 25:00 and 25:02 respectively whilst Ann Davies made a rare appearance at her nearest parkrun with a sub 30 time. Our recent master baker Kelly was on holidays on so Nick made his own cakes to celebrate the milestone which went down very nicely.

A couple of parkrun tourisms as well with recent sign up David Sheard (who will be our next 100 club member in a few weeks) running at Pontefract parkrun, whilst Fiona Drysdale visited Penallta parkrun in Caerphilly for the second time.

August 26 – Kenfig Nature Reserve 5K

A bit of a last minute addition to the race calendar with the manager of the Nature Reserve (who is a keen runner) organising an inter-club race with the help of James Marks of Cornelly Striders. The clubs competing were Bridgend, Brackla, Cornelly, Cwm Ogwr and Porthcawl. We were initially told it was 20 runners per club maximum with 15 to score towards the overall team result. There was a bit of confusion as we were then told there was no limit and then there was, then there was – you get the idea. It did make me a little nervous as there was a fantastic response when I asked who fancied competing and it was over 20, so if there was a limit, I had a bit of a problem.

Fortunately there wasn’t and an incredible 31 members turned up! We easily had the biggest turnout of the 5 clubs involved. None of us really knew what to expect and as it turned out, the run was a lot harder than many of us thought with a lot of it on sand and a short section on grass in the middle with minimal time on tarmac. Neil Jones was first Cwm Ogwr member over the line and 12 overall, followed by Kevin, Chris Williams, myself and Chris Pratt. Amy Roberts was our first female in what was her first off road race. In fact, it was the first off road race for well over half of the members in attendance and although it was only 5K, it was certainly a challenging one.

Entry fee was just £2 and there was water or Lucozade upon finishing and then hot drinks and a vast selection of cakes and biscuits afterwards – can’t argue with that! Cwm Ogwr finished 4 out of the 5 clubs involved and it was very close between us and Brackla for 3. I’m blaming Nick Harris for not being able to make it which may actually have made up the difference. A fantastic event which got me thinking about the possibility of an Inter-club league which I have proposed to the other club contacts and will be pursuing with a view to something being in place for 2016. Watch this space.

August 29 – Porthcawl parkrun

A Porthcawl parkrun without Nick Harris?! As Nick was doing the CPR challenge it meant he was missing from the start line in Porthcawl for the first time since 18 October last year. In his absence it was a trio of Dai’s with Evans, Cappell and Kembrey our first three finishers. Amy Roberts was first Cwm Ogwr female and has so far not been beaten by any other female member. The few who were doing Severn Bridge Half Marathon choose to take it easy, whilst a few ran down to parkrun as part of half / full marathon training so it ended up being a rare parkrun with no PB’s.

August 29th-30th – The CPR Challenge

This was the 4th year this had be run and I was really keen to give it a go. CPR stands for the Cardiff Penath-Run indicating that there are 5 events. The 5 events are split over 2 days and make up exactly a marathon distance (26.2 miles or 42.2K) in total. This includes Cardiff Parkrun (5K) followed by a 10K and then a 4.5K Cross Country run on the Saturday with a Half Marathon (21.1K) and a 1 mile (1.6K) time trial to finish.

Event 1 – Cardiff Parkrun

Kevin, Nick and I signed up and looked a bit odd at the start of parkrun being amongst the 30 odd with a race number on whilst the other 600 people didn’t. As we were ‘racing’ the parkrun we stood reasonably close to the front not to lose too much time. Nick sped off whilst I think Kevin had the other four events in mind and was only a few meters ahead of me for the first 2K before disappearing into the distance. I’d decided beforehand that I was going for it in the 5K and 10K events with PB opportunities due to the flat courses. I finished in 20:27 – a PB! Kevin obviously picked up the pace quite a bit after 2K as he finished in 19:58 whilst Nick clocked a sub 20 for the second week in a row with a 19:46.

Event 2 – 10K

Event two was the 10K with a 2 lap course around Pontcanna fields and lopping round the Swalec Stadium. Kevin had opted for a Tesco’s breakfast in the 3 hours between the races whilst I went for a couple of flapjacks and some milk having seen some program indicating that it’s a better recovery drink than any of the usual isotonic options. The 10K was my big target for the weekend as my 10K PB dated way back to September 2013 despite me beating all my PB’s at other distances on more than one occasion since then. I sped off and for the only time in the whole weekend was in front of Kevin and Nick, albeit for about 30 seconds. All three of us said afterwards that it was an incredibly tough race after blasting the 5K earlier in the day. Nick and Kevin ran the first couple of kilometres together before Nick pulled away and it wasn’t long after before neither of them were within my sight. I really pushed hard and was so pleased to get a PB with a 43:53 to finally break the two year 10K PB lull. Kevin was a little disappointed even though he managed an excellent 42:46 whilst Nick also got a PB with a 42:13.

Event 3 – 4.5K XC

Event three was the 4.5K Cross Country event. Again, what to eat between events came into play with me going for what I would consider a sensible tuna pasta option. Nick on the hand had a McDonalds! Now I’ve been know to suffer with stitches in a few races and know this is a problem Nick has as well so his choice of pre-race food was surprising to say the least. However, who was first of the three of us in the cross country… Nick! The course was very beginner friendly with 2 laps and only a small incline on each and run mostly on grass. However, not so easy with a after giving it everything in a 5K and 10K earlier the same day! Nick ran the 2.8 miles in 20:10, Kevin came in at 20:35, whilst my double PB efforts earlier in the day caught up with me and I could only manage a 22:27. The final results would be the cumulative time of all the events so after day one, Nick had a 70 second lead of Kevin with me a further 2 minutes or so behind.

Event 4 – Half Marathon

Day two started with a Half Marathon. Just what you need after three fast races the day before! The route started with the same first mile as the 10K before crossing over the Millennium Bridge and going past the parkrun start and up the Taff Trail to Long Wood Nature Reserve by the Coryton roundabout and then back on itself. Whilst Kevin was convinced his legs were shot from the day before, I wasn’t quite sure until I started running. I quickly realised my legs weren’t quite up for it and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to go any quicker. My aim was a 1:45:00 but I fell short with a 1:47:55. Our two speedsters smashed it though – a 1:36:03 for Kevin and a 1:38:00 for Nick. Crazy times considering their efforts the day before. Such are their high standards, they were both a little disappointed not to go quicker.

Event 5 – Half Marathon

The final event was a single mile. Sounds easy but after 25.2 miles over 4 events in the previous 28 hours, an all out mile sprint didn’t seem too appealing. As we only had times from our watches to go on there was a bit of uncertainty what the gap was between Kevin and Nick going into the last event but we knew it was close with Kevin having a lead. I was worried I might not even managed a sub 7 minute mile as I was knackered but managed to dig deep for a 6:38 mile. Kevin got a 6:28 whilst Nick smashed it with a 6:06. We eventually found out Kevin beat Nick overall by just 25 seconds with a cumulative time of 3:05:50 to Nick’s 3:06:25. Nick did have the fact he won 4-1 event-wise. My disappointing half marathon time put me much further back at 3:21:22 but I had said beforehand it was all about the 5K and 10K for me which I got PB’s in both so a great weekend for all.

30 August – Severn Bridge Half Marathon

There’d been much discussion beforehand about just how hilly or otherwise this half marathon is. I did the inaugural event last year and my view was that it was pretty hilly or certainly ‘undulating’ as many races like to put it to avoid the ‘H’ word. The organisers desperately try to play down the hilliness on the event website listing a load of half marathons it is less hilly than and pointing out that the second half is almost entirely downhill. I’ll cut to the chase, the ones who did it this year said it was hilly, and let’s remember this a from a group of runners who train on hills every week. However, despite the challenging course, Liz Davis notched up her second half marathon PB of the year with a 2:06:02 whilst Amy Roberts set an awesome time of 1:48:55 on her half marathon debut. I think the women’s club record would have been under threat from her on a flatter course. Chris Pratt was first Cwm Ogwr runner across the line in 1:45:45 with Chris Roberts next in 1:48:10 having run most of the way with Amy. Christie finished in 1:53:58 meaning both him and Chris Pratt were around 3-4 minutes slower than they had been in Afan Argoed a couple of weeks previously, again indicating a challenging course.