2014 race awards

For this post, I’ve linked up with Montana at Pretty Lil Mudder  and a few other fab fitness bloggers – be sure to check out their posts. Here are my 2014 race awards… drum roll, please…

Most Scenic Course

For me this award has to go to Lanhydrock parkrun It’s in a beautiful location, but as the course profile shows, it’s not an easy route:

The event takes place on a National Trust property, which is a stunning old country house. This photo of the gatehouse shows just how magnficent it is.

Most Challenging Course

This was a difficult award to decide on. The profile of Lanhydrock parkrun made it a runner up, but overall, I decided to present it to Adidas Thunder Run. This event is a 24 hour relay on a 10k cross country course. It has lots of different sections: uphill, downhill, short grass, compact ground, mud. The weather conditions were also quite warm.  I ended up running 50k as part of a 7-person relay team.

Best Expo

This was a tough choice as the only races that tend to have expos in the UK are marathons, and I only ran one this year (Brighton). In the end, I decided to award it to the Triathlon Show with Primera Tri Expo as runner up.

 

Best Post-Race Food/Beverages

Braishfield 5 mile beer race – beer, cake and water – what more can I say?

Best Swag

This was another tough category to judge. The goodie bag at Brighton Marathon was good, but the prize has to go to Good Fri Tri, where finishers were not only given a medal, some dried fruit, a drink and their choice of free gift (mug and coaster; bike bottle or buff), but also a lovely Cadbury’s Easter egg 🙂

Stuart and I before collecting our Easter eggs

Most Unique Medal

I loved the ribbon on my Brighton Marathon medal, but probably the one that I liked most was from Eastleigh triathlon:

TryTri have custom medals for every race 🙂

Favorite Race Shirt (tech tee or reg)

I’ve not received many tshirts from races this year. I quite liked the Wiggle Spring Sportive tshirt, but the one that I’ve worn the most is the  Gu Energy Classic tshirt from Bustinskin. It’s a wicking cotton tshirt that was produced in both men’s and women’s sizes 🙂

Favorite Overall Race

I really enjoyed taking part in Weymouth Half. An advantage of taking part in triathlons is that the order of the disciplines is the same as my confidence levels. I started the day feeling nervous, but my confidence soared when I was on the bike and although my run didn’t go quite as I’d hoped, the crowds were brilliant. The whole event was amazing and I would recommend it to anyone.

It was such a relief to see the finish arch © Katherine Anteney

Best Course Support (aid stations, volunteers, people cheering you on, etc)

I loved the crowd support at Weymouth Half… but there wasn’t a huge amount of support out on the bike course. I’m awarding this one to Brighton Marathon as I desperately needed the crowd support during this race and it didn’t let me down!

14 miles © Emily Smith

Race You Are Most Proud of Yourself for Completing

This has to be Weymouth Half – as someone who couldn’t swim 18 months before the race, it has taken a lot of hard work and determination to get to a stage where I could take part in this race. I also had various health battles this year, so I was proud to make the start line and even prouder to finish!

Lap 3 © Marathon-photos

I’d recommend checking out which races my fellow Girls Gone Sporty Ambassadors have presented their awards to:

• Jeanette: Fit In Louisville (http://www.fitinlouisville.blogspot.com)
• Amy: Running Escapades (http://runningescapades.com)
• Melanie: Runner Girl in a Rocking World (http://runnergirlinarockingworld.com)
• Erika: MCMMamaRuns (http://mcmmamaruns.com)
• Andrea: Once Upon a Run (http://www.onceuponarunfairytale.blogspot.com)
• Krystal: The Runner Within (http://therunnerwithin.com)
• Erin: Love for Running (http://loveforrunning.com)
• Sammy: Peace Love & Ice Cream (http://peaceandloveandicecream.com)
• Kelly: Miles to Go (http://miles-to-go.org)
• Sarah: How My World Runs (http://howmyworldruns.com)
• Sue: This Mama Runs for Cupcakes (http://thismamarunsforcupcakes.com)
• Lara: Uptite Mamas (http://uptitemamas.com)
• Kristin: Kristin’s 5k (http://www.kristins5k.blogspot.com)

Which events that you took part in this year would you give prizes to?

Southampton Tri Club’s best new female athlete :-D

It has been such a busy couple of weeks that I’ve struggled to find time to blog – apologies. I’m hoping that I’ll get back up to date soon 🙂

I thought I would share a quick post as this weekend has been particularly exciting. On Saturday, Rob and Stu agreed to pace me at parkrun. They’re doing heart-rate training, so my flat-out race pace is their current training pace. Rob’s really good as a pacer – he guided me around the course advising me to ease back in places and to push harder in others. Unfortunately, I think my tiredness and poor diet this week got the better of me. I also started far too quickly (hello 3:20/km!!!), which probably had an impact on my final result. I was disappointed that I finished in 25:30, which is still 16 seconds slower than my Southampton parkrun PB and 22 seconds slower than my 5k PB… but it was the third fastest time I’ve ever run, so I think that deserves a bit of celebration 🙂

On Saturday evening, we went to Southampton Tri Club Christmas dinner. Suzanne kindly agreed to drive the party wagon, with Katherine, Liz, Stuart and I as her passengers. We managed to get a table together along with Neil and his wife and coach Huw. After we’d had dinner, Darryl stood up to present the awards. The first awards were for the best new athlete (male and female). My friend James won the male award, but he wasn’t able to be the event. I was completely blown away when Darryl awarded me the women’s trophy. It was such a massive surprise and a really lovely way for me to end my first full season.

Best New Athlete trophy

I managed to get through my seconds in the limelight without going into a rambling Oscars acceptance speech style monologue… I saved that delight for you! Thank you to:

• The coaches at Southampton Tri Club – particularly Huw (running and swimming), Peter (swimming) and Steve (cycling).

I also need to thank a few people from outside Southampton Tri Club who’ve helped to get me this far this year:

• Coach Ant from Run Camp
• Friends, fellow Run Leaders and Coaches at Lordshill Road Runners
• Coaches from Embrace Sports
• The inspirational women who make up Team SOAS
• Coaches from SUTri

and last, but by no means least, Stuart.

The next award was Tim Wilks trophy for ‘the spirit of triathlon’. As soon as Steve started describing the winner as always having a smile on their face, we had an inkling of who it might be… this feeling intensified when he discussed the athlete’s highly unorthodox nutrition strategy. The award was presented to my lovely friend, Liz, who described the half marathon at Weymouth Half Ironman as ‘9 2.5k jogs to each buffet’ or ‘a walking picnic’.

Celebrating with Liz

What a fantastic evening 😀

In other news this week, I’ve become a Training Peaks Ambassador. If you’d like to become a Training Peaks Ambassador, you can sign up here: http://sot.ag/3rKyq

I’ve also been reading lots of interesting things online:

• How much do you know about cycling and the law in the UK? Take this quiz to test your knowledge.
• Eight ways to use Strava to become a better parkrunner. Even if there’s no parkrun near to where you live, you might be able to apply some of these points to any regular runs or races that you do.
• This woman is the most stylish athlete right now. I can’t say that I like all of Maggie Vessey’s outfits, but they are certainly striking. I’d love to have her figure and be able to wear clothing like it. It’ll be interesting to see whether the increased attention based on her looks has any influenced on her success as a runner – if the crowd gets behind her then it may help with motivation. What are your thoughts?
• How I drank urine and bat blood to survive – Mauro Prosperi’s account of his attempt to complete the Marathon des Sables.
• Are we becoming a nation of runners? – A BBC news article about the increasing popularity of running in the UK.