July 2021 Handicap results and write up

After repeated promises, but no delivery of ice cream by the Bournemouth crew, James Norris had had enough. He’s taken his ball running trainers and come to HQ to run the handicap, where he managed to get a fantastic photo

It remains to be seen if the Bournemouth crew try and entice him back, but if they are to be successful they might need to deliver something like this;

James and Naomi also maintained their 100% handicap attendance in 2021, with Jo and Neil both missing just 1 event each. Jo is also 1 of 5 people who have run all their 2021 handicaps at Explorer House, the others being Me – 5 events, David Ball – 2 events, Helen Newman & Mark Stileman – 1 event.

Onto the results for this month, congratulations Caroline and Egbe who both ran personal bests. Egbe is already thinking about a sub 30:00, while Caroline’s speed is a bi-product of training for the London Marathon on 3 October.

As you’ll see from the results, I aren’t able to run yet, ankle is getting better and I could run the handicap, but am taking a steady as she goes approach to rehabilitation – hoping to join in again in September.

August handicap will be organised by Jo, as I’m on leave, so she’ll be sending out invite, processing results and authoring the write up.

June 2021 Handicap write up and results

I certainly hadn’t until Thursday evening, but it’s the reason James Norris & Naomi Stanley are now the undisputed and deserved champions of current consecutive handicaps – being the only athletes to run every event in 2021. In 3rd place is Joanne Miles, who hasn’t missed an event since January 2021.

Rather than write about how morose I feel organising handicaps for a small handful of runners and how it used to be much more fun when we had a dozen or more people all on the start line, I thought I’d look back, as April 2021 was the 100th running of the OS Handicap

The first run was on 24 April 2012, for those of you that are newer to OS this was on a 5.6k course, that started by nursery, up Redbridge Lane and Romsey Road, over the Motorway, down Upton Lane, left onto Station Road, then back up by Tesco’s and down the path. The modern equivalent of this route would be slightly different due to the rerouting of path just over the motorway on Romsey Road and the path to 4 Horseshoes