These Latest Race Galleries are now live:
The Brutal 10k, Bordon
Gallery is now live here:
http://bit.ly/Brutal-Bordon-2012-Official-Photos
The Brooks Brighton 10k
Gallery is now live here:
http://bit.ly/Brighton-10k-2012-Official-Photos
Weekends of work continue, it's almost the end of the season..one day I'll get a day off.
The lucky run of perfect weather at the weekend for running outside continues. Although to be honest, most of the brutal runners could have done with heavy rain showers as they finished on Saturday just to dislodge some of the mud. It lived up to it's name in more ways than one. The most amusing part of the day was probably watching people getting squeamish over the first water ditch with 3 inches of water in it - guys that was just the pre-swimming pool foot wash, as you found out.
The good thing about this course was that it started off relatively gently and then descended into the hell gradually, including rather appropriately a very challenging descent on the way round towards the really bad mud, giving me even more poetic license for that analogy.
I'm not sure what it is about the type of people who we see at these races, but they are a different subgroup on the venn diagram of running. I shall illustrate.
So you'll see that not everyone who does these things are what we would call your typical 10k race runners, but they are overwhelmingly people up for a challenge and willing to have a good go at things, and usually smiling (which we still don't understand). I'm just wondering how long it's going to be before some of the larger consultancy companies start trying to recruit people at these things or indeed start to enter teams as part of their own morale and out of office activities. This time I'm sure I saw a group of trainee lawyers from Guildford giving it a go, I just hope none of them got injured... The other thing - we've noticed is that it has a much wider age group than the normal runs we see which are usually 30-60 years old biased. These races are much more 18 to 60 - which is refreshing to see. To date it's the first race we have ever seen in 10 years that has a 100% re-offender rate on the runnersworld reviews - which means something special.
Anyway, the next one is on the 8th of December, they are never crowded mass crazy anonymous events, they are purposely restricted so places are hard to get - so if after running the flat and perfect Brighton 10k you need the antidote for the end of the road season - then this is the one for you - go here to find out more:
BrutalRun.co.uk
And if you don't believe me - have a look at the photos we took on Saturday lower down...or indeed the online gallery
http://bit.ly/Brutal-Bordon-2012-Official-Photos
Sunday started early for the Brighton 10k, mainly because we were still working on the Brutal photos until 2:30am getting that gallery live because we knew the Brighton 10k was going to be a big race and wanted to make sure the decks were clear.
Perfect weather greeted us down on the coast at 8am, a whisper of wind and blue skies. Those of you who know the area well would have been surprised by the lack of prevailing wind from the west - so no negative splits on the return leg this year. With more than four sub 30min runners registered for the race it was going to be a fast one, and we braced ourselves for the start - with more than 2700 runners penned up and ready to go you could see the heat haze rising into the air above them with anticipation.
Reg Hook has penned an excellent review of the race here :
http://www.sussexathletics.org.uk/news.php?id=1251 for Sussex Athletics, so I don't need to repeat it here, the main facts are it wasn't quite sub 30 for Paul Martelletti #3601, because he hit 30:00 spot on, and the Womens winner Caryl Jones #21 from Swansea pretty much ate the Women's record for breakfast by 40seconds down to 32:34. In this high-speed, fast and flat 10k she came 17th overall - which is an awesome performance and an age grade of 93.14% - i.e. very very good.
This years race also signaled the last year that
Chris Carter was going to be in charge. For over 19 years he has held the reins of the race, and grown it to what it is today. For those of you who don't know, Chris (amongst other things)
ran in the 800m at the Mexico Olympics in 1968 and is currently
the chairman of the AAA . I'd like to take the chance to thank him for his personal support and encouragement over the last 10 years with our race photography service. Back when the 10k was manually timed and Chris invited us along our race photos provided invaluable evidence for confirming the results. With the introduction of chip timing we still support the race when numbers get swapped, missed or chips forgotten and some of the stories Chris shares with us are some of the funniest we get from Race Directors. He will be sorely missed as the main man at this race, but I'm sure we will see him around at Withdean Track, Hove Parkrun and generally helping out in the background as ever, but on that note I'm sure you will all join me in thanking him for making the Brighton 10k what it is today.
I'd also like to say a collective and belated hello to all of you who said hello or waved at me individually as you ran past at the start, 3k or finish. I love this race because it has so many friends running in it. If I wanted to I could have spent all morning just chatting to everyone - not getting 5 yards before meeting someone else to talk to (but that doesn't help with the job unfortunately). I love that about this race and it gives me personally a huge emotional boost in terms of enjoying and contributing to the running scene in Sussex, and the contacts and friends I've made over the years since first running for Brighton & Hove AC to now are truly invaluable.
A small handful of photos from the race are below - the full results can be accessed from the brighton10k pages here
http://www.brooksbrighton10k.co.uk/results
We have put over 30,000 images on the gallery here and there is a rare team picture of us at the end after it all -
https://twitter.com/UKSportPhoto/status/270128163084984320/photo/1 collectively holding over £20k of camera kit in that one picture...
Right, here's some of the pictures from the two races, first up Brutal, then Brighton. Enjoy !
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| The cutest runner on the Canicross category |
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| Pensive about the first foot wash |
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| Lost a contact lens here somewhere |
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| Yep, this is OK |
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| Walking along a rotten log over a mud bath would seem like teasing the inevitable |
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| some went in up to their knees, others their elbows |
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| instant hilarity and comradeship |
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| walk like an Egyptian |
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| If you're lucky you get the jaccuzi to yourself |
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| Going down... |
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| Ladies winner, just getting stuck in |
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| 7.6 for swan dive style |
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| 3.2, poor entry |
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| 5.7, good gurning |
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| 8.2 up to your neck in it |
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| Ootang arms |
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| Happy as a man free on a Saturday morning |
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| Going home to watch match of the day |
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| Normal Saturday morning stuff |
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| zombie alert |
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| she was smiling because of something. We don't know what. |
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| carefully picking your way doesn't necessarily make it drier. |
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| Hulk he angry |
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| Even the Marshals make sure the course is safe |
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| click to zoom in and see the heat haze above the heads at the start |
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| they're off, the winner Paul is in the white cap |
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| Thumbs up of support for the runner next to him with terminal cancer. |
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| Looking far too fresh at 3k |
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| Almost a mobot |
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| Mobot or hair scrunchee sorting ? |
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| no press thank you...a good finish |
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| needs to angle that down a bit if he's going for the self portrait |
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| How did Charlotte get on ? |
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| That view |
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| I hope he didn't run the whole way like this |
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| Victory ! |
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| run-in-synch |
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| Jason wanted an alibi for something so I helped provide the evidence |
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| Chris Carter gets things ready with just over a minute to go |
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| Remember - don't forget your shoes next time |
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Right, as ever, until next time go safely.
In the meantime I'm still working on my photographer/chef , amateur/professional analogy for a blog one day, I'll keep you posted.
And don't forget the
Hogs Back race on the 2nd of December or the
Crowborough 10k
laters
Anthony
