BRR Blog - 8 January 2024
Howdie Road Runners!
The highlight of last week was Adam Gemili winning the weekly trophy on Richard Osman’s House of Games - he’s not just a pretty face, you know. The lowlight - other than going back to work after the Christmas holidays - was developing a dodgy knee. If you are having the same problem, there is a link to some NHS exercises, below, that might help.
The planned ‘Percolate’ event in Barking Park is also causing some consternation. We are trying to get hold of an accurate map showing the paths that will be affected before deciding whether parkrun will need to be re-routed or cancelled altogether when the event takes place. The summer handicap and - worst case scenario - our August Bank Holiday 5k race - may also be impacted.
But, in the meantime, the winter virtual handicap is underway. Don’t forget to record your 5k time and post the result - with evidence - on the BRR virtual winter handicap WhatsApp thread before Midnight on Friday if you want to participate.
Or, just stay inside in the warm and read the latest from our forest-dwelling friend…
Dottie Dear’s almanac for January - resolutions
My dustbin is full of toadstools. How do you know it’s full? There’s not mush-room inside.
This month we found Dottie had almost disappeared under a mountain of discarded papers and scribbled notes. It was the aftermath of her latest project: a plan to produce a bumper Souvenir edition of uplifting New Year’s Resolutions, gathered from the Hainault Forest Country Folk membership and sumptuously illustrated with Clip Art images. The collection was designed to provide inspiration for the coming twelve months (and also to raise money for the Hainault Forest Country Folk Benevolent Fund).
She had put out a call on Facebook to invite people to submit their resolutions, and was hoping that she would garner a treasure trove of inspirational thoughts such as: Manifest my Destiny in 2024, or Become the person I always wanted to be.
However, the initial response had been just a tad underwhelming. The Hainault Mummers (who were still sulking after the Norwegian Training Method fiasco, see Almanac for December 2023) had come up with the screamingly banal Polish my bells, and the (possibly ironic) Instal isothermic vents in my socks. The Elders of the Ancient Order of the Green Man had offered Buy a New Vest (predictable) and also Remember to take my tablets (slightly alarming).
To complicate matters, Dottie’s arch-nemesis Mrs Slattersby (Social Secretary of the Woodland Foragers), who had a tendency to turn everything into a competition, had decided to organise a Festive Calendar: Fungi of the Forest: A Mushroom for Every Month, which would also be for sale on behalf of the Benevolent Fund. Mrs Slattersby had never forgiven Dottie for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat during the great Christmas Pudding Incident of the Christmas before last (see Almanac for December 2022). As an act of delayed revenge, her Calendar would (she thought) be sure to outsell Dottie’s paltry booklet of resolutions. It would be edifying and educational as well as a visual feast for the eyes, with lovely photographs of a range of fungiform organisms such as the Scarlet Elfcup and the Blushing Bracket.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, Mrs S was having trouble organising her subject matter: should she, for example, distinguish the mycorrhizal fungi from the saprotrophic variety (do keep up), or simply separate the deadly from the edible? On reflection, she decided that it would be best to leave out the poisonous ones rather than give people ideas, but then she didn’t want to give the impression that it was OK just to go out and eat everything she had put onto the Calendar.
What to do? It was all a bit of a conundrum.
Meanwhile, Dottie had also hit an editorial impasse. The resolutions were pouring in, but it was all starting to take a strange turn. Be nicer to the cat was too worrying for an animal lover like Dottie, as was the rather baffling Stop teasing the goldfish. There was a crop of mundane ambitions such as Clear out the shed, although some of these were a little scary, such as Remember to unplug the iron. Some of the food-related goals were also problematic, as were Overcome my antipathy to lettuce, the stomach churning Conquer my Black Pudding Craving, and the tersely sinister Avoid pickles.
If Dottie had hoped for some more uplifting resolutions in the interpersonal behaviour department, she was disappointed. Try not to bristle too often and Stop saying ‘really’ every five minutes were both focussed too much on cutting out negative behaviours to suit the aims of her project; Balance my serotonin and my dopamine was more positive but perhaps a little too technical, whilst Work on my Rizz, even though forward-looking, was somewhat vague even for people who know what Rizz is.
After sifting through dozens of peculiar offerings, the last straw for Dottie was the impenetrable Prevent slippage in the bathroom, which (since she was not a DIY enthusiast and knew diddly squat about tiling) went right over her head.
Fearing that she had, in fact, uncovered the sinister underbelly of the Hainault Forest Country Folk which was probably best left undisturbed, Dottie decided to concede defeat and make way for Mrs Slattersby’s much-vaunted Fungi Calendar.
However, she needn’t have worried. Mrs S had worked herself up into a right old froth, what with all the ifs and buts about poisons and whatnot, and having fried her brains with too many long words (even for her) had finally achieved the mystical state of Paralysis by Analysis. Fortunately, she then managed to neutralise herself by hitting the Bombay Sapphire that she kept for just such situations (other gins are available). After a few noggins, she had mellowed so much that she decided the Forest Folk would just have to wait another year for the benefit of her meticulous fungal research. In any case, she had her Cliff Richard Calendar as a backup, so that was alright.
Dottie’s conclusions from all this were:
Sometimes it’s better not to know things;
give people enough rope and they may tie themselves in knots and….
the road to self-improvement is dotted with potholes - but Rod Stewart may not always be available. So just think on (as Dottie’s Grandma used to say).
Athletics in the News
We have all had the experience; that moment when you are our running and some bright spark decides they have to run alongside you, only to drop out knackered after a few hundred metres.
US track athlete Alahna Sabbakhan posted a video on Tiktok of a race between her and a man that challenged her to a 400m after “refusing to believe a woman could beat him in a race”. Sabbakhan said” “He was like: ‘Yeah, I could beat her in the 400’ — not realising that that was one of the hardest track events and that was one of my secondary events.”
In her video, she explained that she only agreed to run against him as she was planning to do 400 metres training anyway. According to the University of Virginia runner, she decided to keep up with the man’s pace as she didn’t think it was worth overexerting herself as he “does not run regularly.”
But after hitting the halfway mark, Sabbakhan picked up the pace to “finish hard, because that’s what you do as a track runner”. The clip ended with the gap between the man and her being fairly wide.
Although her main event is 800-metres, Sabbakhan ended up finishing the 400-metre competition in 57 seconds which she thought was “pretty good for practice”. Her personal best times are 53 seconds from a 400m leg of a relay and 54 seconds in an open race. “It was a successful workout, I think,” she said.
The hapless chap added to his own humiliation; despite Sabbakhna inviting him to just work out with her, he ended up bringing a crowd with him consisting of his parents and friends. However, he gracefully accepted his defeat. “He wasn’t like: ‘Oh, that wasn’t fair.’ He was like: ‘Yeah, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.’”
Not a Token Amount
A set of parkrun tokens (224 tokens per set e.g. 001-224, 225-448 etc) costs £40. That’s 18p a token. It doesn’t sound much when you say it like that but, of course, you can’t purchase them individually, you have to buy the whole set. So, you can see why we get upset when we lose one!
Dodgy Knees
Straight leg raises are good for knees!
Oh no! I’ve joined the club I didn’t want to be a member of: the BKC or Bad Knee Club. Non-runners will often tell you that running is bad for your knees, but there is a growing body of evidence that the opposite is actually the case. One in ten adults has osteoarthritis (where the cartilage around the bones deteriorates), so it should be no surprise that, as we get older, we get some aches and pains in our knees. Running doesn’t however, increase your risk, a study by the University of California, quoted in the latest Runner’s World magazine, found. The research surveyed 3,804 runners who took part in the 2019 or 2021 Chicago Marathon and asked about their running history. The researchers found no link at all between increased risk of knee or hip arthritis and how long they had been running, weekly mileage, or pace.
In the same issue of Runner’s World, Sophie Raworth reported reported on a study of 82 first-time marathon runners in their 40s by Alister Hart, an orthopaedic surgeon. Hart did MRI scans of their knees before and after a four-month training plan that culminated in the London Marathon. To his surprise, the exercise had strengthened their bones which, in turn, helped to protect and support their cartilage.
Hart believes the key could be keeping your muscles strong. So, if you are recovering from a knee problem, or want to strengthen your body to reduce the risk of potential issues, you could do worse than trying the NHS knee exercises in this link: Knee exercises for runners - NHS (www.nhs.uk). Some of them you can even do whilst sitting in front of the TV, cleaning your teeth, or waiting for the kettle to boil, so there’s no excuse for not making the time.
Greg’s Run Report
Sunny Bulchandani took part in the Mornington Chasers 10k race in Regents Park. The flat and fast 3-lap course started and finished close to the Broadwalk, taking runners past London Zoo where they could wave to the camels as they went by. Sunny finished in a time of 51:46 beating his personal best by over three minutes.
Sunny at the Regent’s Park 10k
BRR parkrunners
Barking - James Lowndes 21:26, Owen Wainhouse 21:27, Joshua Ezissi 23:42, Doug King 24:55, Rosie Fforde 25:27, James Hall 26:20, John Lang 26:51, Tom Shorey 27:34, Martin O’Toole 27:55, Joyce Golder 28:08, Faye Spooner 28:32, Rob Courtier 30:44, Martin Mason 31:32, Louise Chappell 31:45, Nikki Cranmer 33:30, Lizzie-Beth Garraghan 33:31, Dawn Curtis 34:20, Les Jay 34:21, Dennis Spencer-Perkins 35:14, Jason Li 45:20 and Micky Ball 52:31.
Harrow Lodge - Rory Burr 25:13.
North Yorkshire Water Park - David Botterill 26:51.
Raphaels - Gary Harford 29:56.
Valentines - Paul Withyman 24:32 and Andrew Gwilliam 45:29.
Highest BRR age grading of the week for the women Joyce Golder 61.08% and for the men James Lowndes 66.17%
BRR Diary – January
Download the TeamUp app onto your phone, then enter the calendar key for Barking Road Runners when asked: ks67p21gt8p5gzdo66 to see all BRR’s agreed fixtures for the year. If you have trouble accessing the diary via the app, you can also find it under the ‘events’ tab on the Barking Road Runners website: https://www.barkingroadrunners.org.uk/calendar.
7.00pm, Tuesday 9 January - Speed development. Jim Peters Stadium, Mayesbrook Park. This week we have Turkey Trot (don’t ask…) Trios:
4 x (3 mins slow, 3 mins med, 3 mins hard).
10.00am, Sunday 14 January – Internal cross-country race. Eastbrookend Country Park – a chance for those who volunteered at the official Chingford League Eastbrookend race to earn points towards the Club’s internal 2023-24 Chingford League competition but everyone welcome to come along. Some of us tested the course on Sunday; it was a little muddy in places, some parts were waterlogged and some parts were icy. In other words, be prepared for anything!
The ‘test’ crew at Eastbrookend
w/c 20 January - Virtual Handicap 02.
11.00am, Saturday 20 January – Chingford League, Epping Forest. Jubilee Retreat, Bury Road, Chingford, E4 7QJ. Hosted by Orion Harriers. Race HQ is at the Orion Clubhouse in Jubilee Retreat. Then it's about 10 minutes walk to the race start. A very tough 5 miles cross-country, uphill and down dale. Usually refreshments available in the clubhouse afterwards.
10.00am, Sunday 21 January – Benfleet 15. Hadleigh Country Park. A 15-mile race on mud, trails, and road. To say it is not for the faint-hearted is a serious understatement. Waiting list only (oh, damn, did I fail to enter in time? What a shame!). Some of us may go along to cheer on our clubmates and have a bit of a run by ourselves.
7.00pm, Friday 26 January. Club Curry Night. Curry Mahal, 27 Goresbrook Road, Dagenham, RM9 6UX. We'll do a list of attendees nearer the time.
10.00am, Sunday 28 January – SECCL XC04. Parsonage Farm, Kelvedon Hatch Brentwood, Essex, CM15 0LA, Parsonage Farm. This is a new race in the SECCL competition, organised by Nuclear Races. Normally £5 to enter but just £3 for BRR members, on the day in cash or directly into the BRR bank account.
Cracker Corner – the Knee Edition
Remember the good old days? When you used to have a left and right knee instead of a good and bad knee?
What do you call a knee that grants you three magical wishes? A ge-knee.
What food does Italian knee surgeons like for lunch? Macaro-knee.
What do Indian knee surgeons have with their lunch? Chut-knee.
Quote of the Week
“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
Emiliano Zapata Salazar
Mexican revolutionary (no relation of disgraced coach Alberto Salazar).
And finally…
One of my colleagues lives in Benfleet and often walks in Hadleigh Country Park before starting work. He was not impressed when I told him we had raced there on New Year’s Eve. “The last time you lot races there it ended up looking like the Battle of the Somme’ was his comment.
I sent him this picture so he could see what we had to run through (is Rob helping that woman, or clinging on to her for dear life?). He said “Oh yes, I recognise that spot. That’s where the cows bathe”.
I just hope any of you who fell in the water kept your mouths shut…
Keeeep Running!
Alison
Chair, BRR
