By Stephen Robson
As it was foretold in a club email weeks ago, the 27th day of September 2014 heralded the much anticipated YKH parkrun showdown. Salivating at an opportunity to fairly compete head to head with the barriers of age and gender broken down, 32 intrepid Harriers took to the racecourse to battle for supremacy and bragging rights.
The format was simple: run 5km as fast as your legs and lungs would allow you. The results however were magical – each runner’s time is compared to the world record for their age and gender, then converted into a percentage. The higher the percentage, the closer you are to the peak of human fitness for your category. At last this was an opportunity for the old guard teach the young whippets a lesson, though the whippets were out in force to do some teaching of their own.
As well as the desperate gasping of air to get the highest percentage possible, there were many individual battles to be had.
Chris Roberts
Chris vs Chris
Knavesmire’s men’s captain used to regularly frequent York parkrun, but has lately found solace in the fells rather than the roads. The last time he ran a parkrun against Acorn’s Chris Poulton the red shirted pretender proved no match for our captain, with a parkrun PB of *only* 18:24. Things have changed now, and Chris Poulton filled with confidence after recently breaking the 17:00 barrier took an early lead over Chris Roberts and completed the first 2km a second or two ahead. Our mighty captain rallied in the second half of the run and showed some true Knavesmire grit to finish first place overall in 16:52, twelve seconds ahead of Chris Poulton’s 17:04.
Rob Ward gives it his all
At last week’s parkrun Rob Ward had a stunning run to break 19:00 for the first time. Keen to prove that it wasn’t a fluke Rob once again gave it his all. Not only did he break 19:00 again, but he precisely matched his PB from last week. Do it a third time and then we’ll be impressed!
Cassie Holmes
Cassie Holmes is one of our club’s swifter ladies, and her parkrun times have been gradually marching towards 20 minutes over the last 18 months. Today however she got bored of gradual improvements, so decided to knock 60 whole seconds off her PB in one go. Her time of 19:31 was good enough to be first lady finished, and also cements her parkrun immortality on the coveted sub 20 ladies list.
Nik Tutil enters in Style
Nik was the only Harrier today who’d never done a parkrun before, but he soon found himself at home. Some people spend a lifetime trying to break 20 minutes, but Nik did it convincingly on his first try with 19:47. If he comes back for more Nik can significantly improve even that fast time.
Sam Lyth
Sam Lythe has done 73 parkruns at York, and has only once broken the thirty minute barrier. Today she was on a mission, and came oh so close to repeating the feat. Her time of 30:03 was agonisingly close, but as it was her second fastest parkrun ever she can’t be too disappointed. The beauty of parkrun is that there’s always next week.
Ewan vs. Ste
Ewan Cochrane and Ste Robson continue to be a terrible influence on each other. In previous years Ste could usually rely on being able to leave Ewan behind from the half way point of a race, but those days are gone. Having achieved a stunning parkrun victory over Ste two weeks ago, there was tension in the air at the start. Elbow to elbow the two set off far too quickly and covered the first mile in 5:40. To the relief of Ste’s cardiovascular system, Ewan eased off at 2km as he was preparing for an assault on Ste’s PB at the Redcar Half Marathon the next day. A hollow victory for Ste, but a victory nevertheless.
Age Graded Results
So, on to the juicy results. These are ordered by age graded percentage, so the higher the score the closer runners were to the world record for their gender and category.
Chris ROBERTS – 77.37 %
Kirsty HARVEY – 76.61 %
Cassie HOLMES – 75.83 %
Simon COLLINS – 75.77 %
Janet HALES – 75.77 %
Mark FARMERY – 74.18 %
Nik VOGAN – 74.12 %
Richard WALKER – 73.85 %
Roger BILSBY – 72.26 %
Alaistair MACLEOD – 71.80 %
Graeme HARVEY – 71.75 %
Robert WARD – 70.63 %
Stephen ROBSON – 69.66 %
Nick TUTILL – 68.49 %
Andy BELL – 67.02 %
Vivianne FRASER – 64.80 %
Daniel STURGEON – 64.27 %
Howard PALEY – 63.55 %
Ewan COCHRANE – 63.06 %
Richard TARREGA – 62.93 %
Stephen WILSON – 62.60 %
Graeme ADAMS – 62.04 %
Mike SMITH – 61.77 %
Susan ADAMS – 59.62 %
Michael COLLINS – 59.16 %
Paul NILSSON – 59.03 %
Rebecca QUINN – 57.47 %
Catherine MULHERN – 55.80 %
Samantha LYTH – 54.46 %
Christian SELVARATNAM – 54.00 %
Paul ADAMS – 49.78 %
Darren LEAF – 46.30 %
Being in the male 30-34 age category, Chris Roberts probably still qualifies as one of the young whippets, and he certainly proved his quality with an impressive 77.37 %. For the ladies Kirsty Harvey is in the 50-54 category, so probably not classed as one of the younger ones (sorry Kirsty), but she proved that she’s a quality runner.
Who Gave It Their All?
Age grading is fun, but you could argue that some people are naturally better runners than others, or that they have more time to train. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could see who actually put the most effort in today? How fortunate then that we can! By comparing everyone’s previous York parkrun PBs to today’s results, we can see who gave more than 100%.
Cassie HOLMES – 104.9 %
Kirsty HARVEY – 103.2 %
Janet HALES – 103.0 %
Roger BILSBY – 102.4
Graeme HARVEY – 102.4
Mary FARMERY – 100.5 %
Simon COLLINS – 100.3 %
Nik VOGAN – 100.0 %
Robert WARD – 100.0 %
Stephen ROBSON – 99.0 %
Howard PALEY – 98.8 %
Richard WALKER – 98.6 %
Richard TARREGA – 98.4 %
Samantha LYTH – 98.1 %
Chris ROBERTS – 97.9 %
Paul NILSSON – 97.7 %
Andy BELL – 97.2 %
Susan ADAMS – 97.0 %
Vivianne FRASER – 96.9 %
Rebecca QUINN – 96.3 %
Alaistair MACLEOD – 96.0 %
Graeme ADAMS – 95.6 %
Stephen WILSON – 94.8 %
Christian SELVARATNAM – 93.9 %
Darren LEAF – 93.6 %
Michael COLLINS – 92.7 %
Catherine MULHERN – 91.3 %
Paul ADAMS – 90.6 %
Ewan COCHRANE – 89.8 %
Daniel STURGEON – 89.2 %
Mike SMITH – 84.0 %
Nik Tutil has no previous parkrun PB so doesn’t appear on this list, but if we do this again he’ll certainly qualify. Cassie’s stunning 60 second PB made topping this list a simple matter – if she can improve by the same amount next time she’ll be comfortably under 18 minutes. Kirsty Harvey is second on this list as well as the age graded list, running a massive PB to earn it. Although Chris Roberts topped the age graded list, by his standards today’s performance was decidedly mediocre, almost ‘phoning it in’ with a 97.9% effort. I don’t blame him though, if I could finish in first place without giving 100% then I’d be tempted to do so.
Overall a fun morning was had. Hopefully we can do another event like this in the future, and maybe get even more Harriers to join in the fun.
The full results can be found here
A full set of photographs can be found here
