Flu Part 2

I’m afraid that I’m still suffering with Flu.  I’ve missed most of the so called ‘festive season’ and have not been able to spend the time with friends and family that I would have liked to.  I had a brief respite and returned to work last Friday, a quiet weekend followed but I’m afraid that I wasn’t feeling great at work on Monday.  I actually went to the gym at Monday lunch time but knew that I wasn’t up to exercising and didn’t even get changed into my gym gear.  Monday night was a nightmare as the Flu symptoms really kicked in with a headache, aching muscles and night fever, which resulted in me having to change my PJs three times during the night.  Lemsip Flu Max was taking at regular intervals but to little if any effect.  Tuesday has been a complete write off. I was looking forward to seeing Les Miserableson Tuesday night but instead it was me that was the miserable one as I spent the day shattered and falling in and out of sleep.  My body has decided that I will need to rest, so be it!   I’m sure that they’ll be plenty of time for rebuilding friendships and getting back to fitness in the near future but for now it’s rest and plenty of fluids for me.  

Fast Tom

Here's a photo of a friend racing the Glasgow parkrun with a 'dramatic zoom blur effect' added in photoshop

Tom Ross

Smashing Bus in Hope Street, Glasgow

Make sure that your clutch is at biting point before you release the hand brake on a hill, you never know what might be behind you!!

Better Together?

Unionists stage a peaceful protest outside of the office of Deputy First Minister (Government strategy and the Constitution), Nicola Sturgeon, before heading to Ibrox to watch Rangers play against English based Berwick Rangers in the Scottish Third Division.

Through the Years

Through the Years, a set on Flickr.

Here's a number of photos of me and various friends and comrades over the years. Some famous and some less so. Sadly a number of them are no longer with us. Happy days indeed.

Stats the way to improve your handicap

I mentioned previously that the Christmas Day Glasgow parkrun had been graded with an SSS of 2.8 and that the long New Year’s Day one would probably have an even higher rating and I was right.  Runbritain graded the race as 4.4, the highest I’ve ever seen is 5. 

Andy Capp

The SSS is an indication of how difficult the race was on the day, a low SSS indicates that runners recorded fast times and a high SSS reflects slow times.  Runbritain also calculate a thing known as ‘relative SSS’ or vSSS, which measures individual performances relative to the race SSS.  Therefore the lower your vSSS the better you performed in the race, relatively.  My vSSS on New Year’s Day was 1.7, which was significantly lower than the 4.4 of the race, meaning that I ran relatively well. 

Runbritain then use the vSSS to calculate your handicap, which allows you to monitor your progress or otherwise.  To reflect your present form, rather than using your best ever times, Runbritain use up to five recent best performances in the calculation. These are denoted by a + next to your results on your Runbritain page.  Note Runbritain use the results of UK Affiliated races, including parkruns, which are published on the Powerof10 website.  If you can’t find your name, simply register and a whole new world of your race stats will open up to you.

What does SSS mean?

Tim Grose, founder and chief statistician of Athletics Data (who operate Powerof10 and Runbritain) gives the following explanation:

"Each 'raw' performance is converted to a points score on scale 0-36. The SSS is then what is taken off that score to give the adjusted score for that race and it is that adjusted score that contributes to your handicap - a weighted average of your best five. The harder the conditions the higher the SSS is. SSS is a golf term meaning standard scratch score so I basically borrowed the terminology. In golf SSS indicates the difficulty of the course and not necessarily the sum of all the pars. Royal St. Georges has a par of 70 but you can bet the SSS is a few shots higher."

This Blog is brought to you by a runner suffering with the Flu and not being able to do any actual running.

Happy New Year

I'm down with Influenza but I wanted to thank all my readers for visiting the site over the last 12 months and look forward to the next year. I've had almost 84,000 hits since starting this Blog in May 2008 and every single one has been appreciated. I hope that you willl continue to read my musings in 2013.

 Sadly another couple of my school friends died prematurely in 2012, which should be an incentive to us all to make the best use of the time that we have on planet Earth.  

A Guid New Year to Yin and a' and mauny may ye see.  Remember absent friends but look forward too and make your life worth living.   Have a great 2013!  

B&W Pic of me running

Here's a pic taken in Lenzie of me running a few years ago. I like the grain that the cobbled road provides. I'm not 100% sure but it could have been taken by Karen Craig.

2013 First Foots in Pollok Park

I hadn’t run since Christmas Day, in fact I’d hardly been out doors at all as my flu kicked in flooring me completely. Things actually got better and worse as fever kicked in and toothache came calling on the night of the 30th December.  Thankfully my dentist had an appointment on Auld Year’s Day and, as well as treating the infected filling, she also put me on a course of antibiotics.

Right cheek Swollen with toothache - pic by Chris Quinn

I’m not quite sure if I should have been drinking when taking antibiotics but it was Hogmanay and Guinness, red wine and malt whisky had to be taken. Not surprisingly, I woke on the first morning of the year with a bit of a headache.  I had to get up to take my antibiotics and decided that I might as well sweat out the alcohol and maybe some of the germs too by participating in the first park run of the year.
It was great to see so many friends both running and volunteering.  I was surprised that this was the first time that some of them had participated in the Pollok Park event, this was my 102nd attempt.  We were busy exchanging New Year greetings, when Race Director, Campbell Joss, advised us that a tree was blocking part of the route and today’s run would be slightly more than the usual 5k.

Some 164 of us set off at 9:30am, I was feeling rough but was still able to run, although I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I faded.  After a mile, I was enjoying the downhill section, when I felt a slap on my back. “Happy New Year” said ’Geordie’ Jim Robinson as he overtook me and ran into the distance.  I’m not in Jim’s class but I did know that I had some rivals behind me and I wanted to beat Cambuslang’s Terry Dolan, who had placed ahead of me on Christmas Day.  I was suffering though and had to dig in deep for the mental strength to keep going.  It worked though and I started to work my way up through the field.  With 1k to go, I thought that I could see Geordie Jim ahead and was that Irvine’s Jim White ahead of him too?  It ddn’t really matter if it was them or not, I was going to focus in on them and use them to pull me through the last part of the race.

Up the last hill, down to the right turn point and then a final 200m downhill sprint and I crossed the line in 49th place, just behind Geordie Jim, with Jim White in 41st place. Terry Dolan placed 50th in 23:54.   I was extremely happy to get a top 50 place, my first since Christmas Day 2011!  However my time was a disappointing 23:49.  I had worked much harder than my last race and was feeling shattered.  My mood was lifted a little when I worked out that the course had been 0.26 miles longer and that this equated to me taking 5 seconds off of my 22:42 last week.  Although that time wasn’t great either, I had noticed that the Run Britain Rankings had giving the race a ranking of 2.8. Probably the highest for any race that I’ve run on the road.  My ranking had been 1.8, which means that I did OK, relative to others in the race.  I’ll be interested to see what today’s race ranking will be.

Again, it would have been good to stay after the run for some refreshments and chat but a quick exit home for a hot shower was probably the correct choice.

Many thanks to everyone for providing such a great start to 2013.


Full Results

Chris Quinn's pics

Nocturnal Railway Workers

My first photo of 2013 catches railway workers in Pollokshields in the dark morning of 1st January.