{"id":1614,"date":"2011-07-12T23:05:20","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T22:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=1614"},"modified":"2022-04-11T21:44:14","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T20:44:14","slug":"beacon-hill-trail-run-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/beacon-hill-trail-run-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Beacon Hill Trail Run 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

It could be said that my preparation for races is really quite shoddy. I rarely get an early night before an event, and prior to the Beacon Hill Trail Run<\/a> the last time I had run was a month before (at LAMM<\/a>). The Beacon\u00a0 Hill course was five miles long, in an up-down-up-down pattern along the hill. It was a strange mix of entrants, as it included not only runners, but Nordic walkers<\/a> and cani-crossers<\/a> too. The start line was therefore a jumbled mass of runners, dogs, and walking poles. After some initial confusion everything calmed down a bit and I settled into a pace. Said pace was faster than usual, given the short distance and the fact that this was a trail run on a wide gravel track rather than my usual fell-running antics.<\/p>\n

\"Beacon

Beacon Hill Trail Run 2011 route. Screenshot from Ascent; map data copyright Google et al.<\/p><\/div>\n

I was feeling the strain on the uphills, with my cardiovascular fitness evidently taking a massive hit from four weeks without any kind of training. Nevertheless, I pushed on and kept up the pace past the halfway point where my brother was stood, cheering me on.\u00a0 Back up the hill again, and the pack spread out some more at the top. I suffered on the final downhill stretch: dodgy knees mean I can’t just let go and power down like everyone else, but have to constantly check my speed.<\/p>\n

Official race photos are here – search for number 97 if you’re interested in seeing what I’d look like when attacked by a swarm of copyright notices<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I crossed the line feeling generally OK, but having put in a lot of effort to keep the speed up. My final time was 36m 35s, placing me 17th out of 103 entrants<\/a>. There were definitely some cani-crossers ahead of me, but unfortunately the results aren’t split by category so I don’t know how far down the field of runners I was. Yet again I have a race where being a minute faster would have made a huge difference – lifting me to 9th place in this case. I guess I should really start some proper training…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It could be said that my preparation for races is...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[698,699,700,396],"class_list":["post-1614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outdoors","tag-beacon-hill","tag-beacon-hill-train-run","tag-pure-personal-training","tag-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}