News
HHH VR 9 Blackcap Club Handicap - Final report
(December 13, 2020)Beetroots,
The race window closed at 4pm today for both the internal handicap and the intra-club race. I will let El Presidenté update us all on the latter in the fullness of time. I shall stick to all matters Beetroot.
Firstly, thanks all 44 of you that turned out this week and gave it a good crack. It was a great way to get out and celebrate life, for sure! We are gradually cutting a trench around the trig point. School trips in future years will visit and marvel at the Stone Age topology and the strange unearthly groove around the trig point created by Martians.
I digress. To the competition.
Congratulations to the Top 4! Two Gold Medal Winners in the Beetroot Winter Handicap Challenge. So fantastic to see Amy, Josh, Carys and Kai top of the board! This competition rewards runners that have made leaps and bounds in their performance over the summer and these 4 took big lumps out of their handicap targets that were largely based on performance on this same course. Well done to all of them, and the trick now is to push on and improve again! Of course, a handicap is a calculated thing (sprinkled with some fairy dust) so those toward the bottom end of this table can just pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over again.
Here are our Champs post-race. Amy very chilled, Josh less so.
Congratulations also to the Top 3 in the Beetroot Winter Handicap Age Grade Challenge. This competition provides a level playing field for all our runners, and removes the bias that an element of youth brings to the show. Anyone achieving age grade percentages over 70% is motoring and we had lots of them in the Challenge this week. Well done to Marcus, Marion and Ben for showing us all that phenomenal running is not age related.
Congratulations also to the winners of the Beetroot Winter Handicap Speedy Challenge. This competition rewards the quickest between two points – namely the start and the end of the Strava Blackcap segment! I am always in awe of speedy people – I just cannot compute travelling as fast as they do for as long as they do. Ben G and Kim really are very fast
One last point to mention. I got a message from a Beetroot who has been recovering from injury for quite a while now. She couldn’t run but asked me if walking the segment would be a good way of remembering Chris. I was out on my attempt this morning, and suffering at 6k or so when Sarah Hamilton shouted at me to stop walking and get on with it! Sarah, true to her word, walked the segment in the driving wind and rain this morning. Sarah’s time on the segment was 1hr 18:46. Sarah wins the Beetroot Winter Handicap Challenge – Joining In Award !
I thoroughly enjoyed reporting on the 370kms of racing that you all did, and smiling at the craic.
And so I would remember why I was running, I fettled this from some Kipling nonsense. Thanks for running everyone.
The Blackcap Challenge Juche Council