Happy New Year ! (chinese new year if you insist). Well that was a busy weekend back after - no work since December 2023. Things can get a bit weird if you're not up on your self motivation and ready for the rush ahead and keeping on top of the admin for next year (yes it does take a bit of organisation and planning!)
To go from zero to three races on a sunday with the full team of 22 photographers out and about - and a total of more than 15,000 runners and taking over 500,000 imags with live delivery for 450,000 of them on race day - was a bit of an acceleration rate from hibernation.
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| Cambridge University, Kings college chapel and some Student runners, and daffodils. Can you tell it's spring ? |
Hibernation went relatively well - I did not lose that much weight or put that much on, and the company is going through what can only be described as a chrysalis stage - although we're not quite at the fundamental level of everything turning to a sort of microbial goo and reassembling itself into colourful wings. We await the full moment of emergence into the summer event calendar - but as David Attenborough might say "often these things do not go smoothly, but eventually the creature makes it into the sun and over a period of days it begins to discover life beyond it's front door". Not quite sure If we're the grizzly bear or a hamster, but spring seems to be knocking.
So with that I hope you're enjoying the slightly warmer training, the almost light evenings after work, and the less unforgiving rain. If the mud on my hash run was anything to go by (and I say Mud, but basically standing water 5 inches deep across many many fields), hopefully we won't be cast into drought this year and the water table is getting a good soaking. It is also is a realtively safe to point out if the carpark at the national cross country had been anything like that, then the tractor would have got stuck - let alone the cars - so it was probably for the best that it's all rearranged for the 14th of September. A fast and dry one possibly ? should see a different type of runner benefit from the season and the time of year and training. August endurance training anyone ? (no thanks!).
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A Full size Start arch for the Cambridge Half - complete with logo and artwork
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Galleries and Future events - quick links - all the galleries are now fully quality control checked and upgrade orders can be made. For clarity - if an event logo etc is on the image that will exist on everything including prints - unless you order the original digital image by email. We've had a few people being surprised that their heavily discounted high resolution image price thanks to the sponsors includes logo of said sponsors and race logo. That's the whole deal...
Sun-03/03/2024 Steyning Stinger https://sspimg.com/Steyning-Stinger-2024-Gallery
Sun-03/03/2024 Cambridge Half Marathon https://sspimg.com/Cambridge-Half-2024-Gallery
Sun-03/03/2024 Paddock Wood https://sspimg.com/Paddock-Wood-2024-Gallery
Sun-24/03/2024 Brentwood Half - enter http://bit.ly/Brentwood-Half
Sun-07/04/2024 Southampton Marathon /half/10k - enter http://bit.ly/southampton-half
So next up for us is Brentwood at the end of the month, and then we're straight into the Southampton Marafun weekend...
Some of you will have noticed our new front page - which is all part of the
www.SussexSportPhotography.com re-positioning of how we are trying to make it easier for you to find images, and to share them with purpose and meaning with those you care about and who care about you and your endeavours.
Hopefully that will get better and better with use feedback - but you can always just go straight to the date based gallery front page and drill down that way -
https://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com/gallery-list which we keep brutally simple - just because thats what we all like in life
At some point I might need to put the results links against events so when people select an event they can actually go somewhere to find out what their race number was (because that's not the easiest thing to remember) - but trying to make that bit tidy and simple to use is also not so simple. So work to do.
In the meantime here's some photos from the weekend !
First up the ever popular TTP Cambridge Half Marathon 2024
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| G'raf on kings street, outside the Chapel and the Senate House - where they get their degrees |
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| Special celebration arm backpack |
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| C'mon Lee ;-) top effort mate |
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| Small, and Far away ? |
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| And now you know why parking in Cambridge is a nightmare |
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| To be fair he's getting a great selfie with the Bridge of Sighs hidden behind the bush on the right |
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| I think my photo of him is better than his one... but he probably doesnt have the railings |
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| In 1986 I took a black and white photo along the inside corridor of this building as a play of light and shadow on the internal corridor as the sun dappled through the arched windows. It's still up in my hallway. |
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| Bungle is keeping the couch to 5k real. Looks like it's working too. |
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| All ok at the Cambridge Half this year ! |
Over in deepest Kent - at the Paddock Wood Half
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| Hungry work out there |
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| Rise like a Phoenix |
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| Fly like a plane |
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| Past the scenic hopbines of Kent (really hard to get these in the background !) |
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| busy pacer bus riders |
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| Proper competitive finishing |
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| lots of pointing about the place |
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| a good flow out of the start |
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| Flying down of the railway bridge - the high-point of the course |
and then over in Steyning in deepest mud
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| celebrating the first climb done |
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| everything is going well |
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| red team v green team - who would claim victory ? |
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| proper cross country |
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| almost done at the last field - conditions better than last year |
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| views off to worthing in the far distance |
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| on top of the world with your friends - what's not to enjoy |
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| breaking through the cloud and mist layers for the best views |
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| strong finishing on the relatively new established/stone dressed local path. it used to be just mud. |
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| demonstrating the correct way to wear a number on a leg ! - because horizontal ones wrap around and the digits can't always be seen fully. |
So that's it for most of this week, its been a hell of a return journey for us to the 2024 season and we look forwards to seeing you out there and doing your thing more in the year ahead !
Until next time - train safely
Anthony
