First BVH 5k of the Season

It's that time again.  Summer is here (sort of).  Which can mean only one thing.  The BVH 5k series is up and running again.

When?  Wednesday, May 2, 2012.
Time?  7pm.
Where?  Under the Olympic Arches outside the YMCA in Eau Claire. 

Let me know if you're coming - duncanmarsden@gmail.com.

BVH goes Global!

The Bow Valley Harriers officially has a global reach, as demonstrated by Harrier Mark Steinle winning the 34 mile Endurancelife Coastal Race Series Sussex event (in England) in 4 hours and 38 minutes.  Steinle is pictured below cruising up a hill in his BVH vest in a scene which couldn't look less like Alberta (particularly in March!) if it tried. 



Steinle overtaking a footballer



Bow Valley Harriers St Patrick’s Day 10k Exploits

by Travis Cummings

The first big road race of the Alberta road racing season kicked off in fine fashion for the Bow Valley Harriers. These early events are always exciting as we see who went into full hibernation during the winter and have work to do and who only went into a stage of torpor and have spry legs in anticipation for the months ahead. The new 10k course is quite a bit more challenging than the old course around the U of C; in fact the new South Calgary course is deceivingly hard, full of twists, turns, and rolling terrain, and a few long, gradual climbs. Needless it isn’t a course to break a world record on, yet some really solid times were posted from some of our star performers.

To begin, Darcy Bell, who is laying early claim to a 2:33 marathon performance at Scotiabank Calgary Marathon Weekend, placed 12th in a time of 35:49. Cracking the top ten in 8th place was local celebrity Blaine Penny, whose efforts earned him a time of 35:05. Mr. Consistent, Jody Draude, seems to defy aging with his clockwork improvements in running each year; he made his case for 4th place in a time of 34:35. It is worth mentioning he placed just ahead of Alberta Timex Series Road Race legend Brian Torrance, who was in our fine city from that god awful truck stop 3 hours north of us to test his mettle against the best Calgary had to offer. However the top performance of the day was had by Travis Cummings. On the eve of his 27th birthday, running like a man with something to prove, Travis regained his form as champion of the St Patrick’s Day 10k for the 3rd time in the past 4 years. Frankly, he was sick of being carved up for dropping out last year. Pretty sure he laid claim to the after party title as well but the recollections are foggy so that is still up for debate. Looks like winter mileage and newly christened maturity are starting to pay off for the moderately young Cummings. He finished in a time of 33:26, fighting off a strong performance by Ryan Russell, who made a ballsy move at 7.5k but faded with a kilometer to go.

The boys took it out pretty fast, going through 3k in 9:45 and 5k in 16:20, then the hills hit on the back half and the pace slowed a little. Great start to the season fellas, let’s keep the momentum going!

K100, pretty much the most important race in the world, is officially only 3 months away so it is looking promising for a successful title defence!

“It’s at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys.” – Emil Zatopek

TC

Sarcastic blogging encouraged…

Harriers in Training

Marathon and Half Rankings - 2011

Thanks to Jody for pointing me in the direction of this link:

http://www.marathoncanada.com/mcMarathonRankings.htm

As Jody says "As we narrow down into the Age Group and Regional categories, BVH really starts to stand out."

The Passing of a Legend

Frank Horwill MBE
June 19, 1927 - January 1, 2012

The term "legend" is banded around all too regularly nowadays.  For Frank Horwill it is an understatement.

I first met Frank in the year 2000 when I turned up to Battersea track to do a training session and stumbled across the man who would be my coach for the next 7 years, three times a week, without asking for anything in return.  Our Saturday sessions were two hour long affairs which involved all manner of exercises - leapfrogging, piggybacking, uphill hopping - and invariably in my case a recovery nap afterwards but it was not uncommon for up to 50 athletes to turn up to these sessions and to travel up to two hours to be part of them.  I often wondered what the people sat in their cars in the traffic jams on the Embankment thought as 25 or so shirtless guys would fly by at 5 minute mile pace.  They must have wondered who we were running from.  Truth is, it was all about who we were running FOR. 

Frank's athletes quickly learned not to bother asking how many repetitions we were doing or what the recovery was (the response was invariably "enough time for a cup of tea and a bun").  He never gave anything away about the suffering to come because he never wanted us to hold back.  I remember one session of 25 x 400m with 30 seconds recovery.  We all assumed we would be doing our usual 16 repetitions but when we had given our all on the 16th, we received a sharp "keep going".  Same comment after the 20th.  There was relief all round when he stopped us at 25 but had he asked us to keep going, we would have.  I once asked him to autograph my copy of the book he had authored ("A Lifetime in Athletics") and he wrote in it "Keep going, keep going, until a little voice in your head says 'keep going'". 

Frank formed the British Milers Club and created the training system which Peter Coe used to coach his son, Seb, to Olympic glory.  He coached Olympic athletes and plodders with the same enthusiasm and only ever asked his athletes to give him one thing - everything.  And we did.  Because he did.

Well-known in South Africa as "Sir Frank", he finally received the long-overdue recognition he deserved with an MBE in 2010.

Frank's desire to drop our PBs was only matched by his desire to see us pair up.  He saw himself as a bit of a match maker.  And he was good at it!

Unafraid to create enemies in the establishment with his brutal honesty, he was loved unwaveringly by every one of his athletes.  You will be greatly missed, Comrade.

MitoCanada

About a year ago a group of intrepid Harriers ran 100k for MitoCanada.  A very talented local film maker (Neil Webb) made an excellent 20 minute documentary about it and it's now online.  It's REALLY well done and well worth 20 minutes of your time. You can also see quite a bit of the second-worst-BVH-apparel (behind Nick's shorts) if that interests you:
http://www.statinpro.com/RunningOnEmpty.html

Be prepared to cry though...!!!

(You may have to cut and paste the address into your browser, rather than just click on the link, for some reason...)