Harriers on Holiday

There are fewer races during the holiday season. Probably because people go on holiday. And there are fewer people writing about races during the holiday season, because they go on holiday too. So my apologies go out to anybody who did actually race in the past couple of weeks while I was away on holiday. As long as it’s on …

GVH Learns to Run Again

On Wednesday 19th July 12 Gade Valley Harriers gathered at Waddesdon Manor near the village of Waddesdon, north of Aylesbury, for the July round of the Club League. The Waddesdon 5k race follows a fairly simple out and back (up and down) route. It starts in the big car park at the bottom of the hill, goes up steeply to …

Lord of the Runs

According to Wikipedia, Bilbo Baggins, at the start of Lord of the Rings, travels to Rivendell and visits the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain before returning to retire at Rivendell and write books. One assumes that one day he would catch up with Frodo, after the latter’s adventures across three whole books, and catch up on what has been going …

Midsummer Madness

Midsummer always seems to come a bit earlier than expected. It seems like the summer only started a couple of weeks ago and yet last Wednesday, 21st June, was the Summer Solstice 10k in St Albans. Given that (hopefully) summer should last until somewhere around early – mid September, it isn’t really midsummer at all. More like early summer Wednesday, …

Hospital Harriers

The weekend of 10th and 11th June was hot. It was extremely hot in fact. So you would think that any kind of running would be tough. It was. In fact, Parkruns, at 9:00AM on Saturday felt very difficult indeed. One wonders why so many Harriers volunteered to run 13.1 miles in the searing heat in the St Albans Half …

Pigs Fly before Bandits Relent

The GVH annual summer handicap series got underway belatedly on Thursday May 25th. The scheduled April race was cancelled because part of the route was flooded and the decision was taken not to reschedule that race so the handicap series has been reduced to only 4 rounds, making each round all the more important. As usual there was a degree …

Baselining

It was a quiet weekend of racing for GVH with no marathons and no ultra marathons. Only a handful of people were in racing action on Sunday but there was a large turnout at Cassiobury Parkrun on Saturday for the 5k baseline run. Through the summer the focus for the club shifts to a training regime to improve speed on …

Regal Performance From Ultra-Harriers

The Coronation weekend will be remembered for the coronation, millions of hangovers and a group of Gade Valley Harriers who sat through Saturday’s show without touching any drinks as they kept their coronation powder dry for the Chiltern Ultra 50k trail race on Sunday May 7th. The addition of the extra bank holiday certainly proved useful for some as they …

Results Fairy Back in Action

With the Spring marathon season concluded most of the Harriers who were racing returned to the more mundane pursuits of the club league at the Pednor 5 (mile) race on the Bank Holiday Monday. Three members took on the half marathon in Milton Keynes and clearly nobody told ultra specialist Chris Dowling that the marathon season was over as he …

Marathon Season Ends on a High

On Saturday 22nd April the GVH Parkrun tour paid a visit to Buckingham Parkrun. With several Harriers otherwise engaged over the weekend there was still a healthy turnout of 8 athletes at Buckingham. Jon Roberts showed his enduring class, finishing 1st for the Harriers, 4th overall and 1st in his age category, in 18:30 while Helen Cook was the first …