BlueSkiesResearch.org.uk: Blue Skies Research on tour: Exeter edition

A while ago Mark (leader of the top secret project we are involved in) suggested that it had been a while since we visited the Met Office in Exeter where he works (blog tells me it was exactly 5 years ago, shortly after we had returned to the UK and before Blue Skies Research was really that well established). And then a few months later an invitation dropped through our letterbox for Malcolm’s birthday party. So, a cunning plan was hatched…we could travel down on Thursday, give seminars about our recently submitted papers (see previous posts here and here) on the Friday and stay for the Saturday party.

I always enjoy visiting the Met Office, it’s a hugely impressive place with a massive concentration of bright people working on interesting problems in the geosciences. Of course there must be some boring handle-turning in the day to day work and it’s a long way from just about everywhere. But Exeter is a nice enough place. Tickets and hotel were booked (not the Royal Clarence which has burnt down since our last trip) and the trip down was uneventful enough. Unfortunately Mark texted while we were on our way to say he was ill and was going home from work rather than meeting us for dinner that evening.

We got down in time for me to go for a short run in the fading light. The river seemed a bit high with all the recent rain.

I didn’t run along this side of the river where the path was submerged! There was a better path on the other side. And then on Friday morning, having scoped out the route through town, I managed to get a bit further along the river for sunrise.

Actually this particular bit is a canal.

We then had the (what we later discovered to be quintessentially Exonian) experience of seeing our bus vanish up the road a few minutes before we got to the stop at the scheduled time…fortunately there was enough time in hand to get to the Met Office. Mark was still absent but had already arranged a full day of activities with people to talk to.

Seminars seemed to go ok, we gave a double-header with two fairly short talks summarising the two papers. Here and here are our pdfs if anyone is interested. I think there was also video streaming for people who couldn’t make it on the day, but probably no recording of this. It seems that a lot of people do a bit of working from home and/or part-time hours which is in principle a good thing though did mean there were a few absences.

By the end of the day we were quite tired from the unusual amount of talking – cats are a little less demanding! We are generally happy to work by ourselves on a day-to-day basis but it’s also great to have the occasional opportunity to bounce ideas around with people doing related work and we had a lot of interesting discussions.

Saturday was party day, and fortunately Storm Dennis passing over didn’t cause too many problems though I think a couple of attendees didn’t make it and it also meant the local parkrun was cancelled so we just mooched briefly through town in the morning. Of course we had seen the news of lots of rain and wind across the country and wondered if our trip home on Sunday would go smoothly.

Birthday boy above

I woke early on Sunday…and quickly found that there were almost no trains out of Exeter. Just one early train to London in fact, 2 hours earlier than our plan, so I quickly booked us onto it and we got to the station in plenty of time…to sit on the train for 20 minutes until they told us it wasn’t running after all and we would be offered a bus to Taunton instead. We briefly considered just going back to bed and staying an extra day but instead decided to take any option going in roughly the right direction and crossed our fingers, which in practice meant going to London and then out towards Leeds and amazingly managing to get home at the originally planned time. Train apps are a bit of a life-saver in these situations (also helpful with the train cancellations on our previous London trip) as it would have been rather more challenging to work out route options otherwise. I don’t really blame the train companies in these situations, there’s not a whole lot they can do about such a volume of rain in a short interval. It seems that the Exeter area was particularly badly hit this time and once out of the immediate vicinity, there was a reasonable service though at times it felt more like a cruise than a train journey!

Outcomes

At the start of the year I made some predictions. It's now time to see how I did.

In reverse order....

6. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase (p=0.999).

Yup. I don't really need to wait for 1 Jan for that.

5. 2019 will be warmer than most years this century so far (p=0.75 - not the result of any real analysis).

As above, I know we've a few days to go but no need to wait for this one, which has been very clear for a good while now.

4. We will also submit a highly impactful paper in collaboration with many others (p=0.85).

Done, reviews back which look broadly ok, revision planned for early next year when we all have a bit of time (31 Dec is a stupid IPCC submission deadline for lots of other stuff).

3. Jules and I will finish off the rather delayed work with Thorsten and Bjorn (p=0.95).

Yes, the project is done, through the write-up continues. Actually we hope to submit a paper by 31 Dec but there will be more to do next year too.

2. I will run a time (just!) under 2:45 at Manchester marathon (p=0.6).

Nope, 2:47:15 this time. The prediction was made just a few days after I'd run a big PB in a 10k but even then I thought it was barely more likely than not, and it got less likely as the date approached. 

1. Brexit won't happen (p=0.95).

On re-reading the old post, I have to admit I cannot remember the precise intention I had when I wrote this. Given the annual time frame of the remainder of the bets, and the narrative of that time being that we were certainly going to leave on the 29th March (as repeated over 100 times by May - remember her? - and the rest of them) I do believe I must have been referring to leaving during 2019. After all, I could never hope to validate a bet of infinite duration. So yes, I'm going to give myself this one.

On the other hand, I did actually think that we would probably not be stupid enough to leave at all, and clearly I misunderestimated the electorate and also the dishonesty of the Conservative Party, or perhaps as it should be known, the English National Party.

I have learnt from that misjudgment and will not be offering any predictions as to where we end up at the end of next year. Which is sort of inconvenient, as we are trying to arrange a new contract with our European friends for work which could extend into 2021. Our options would seem to include: limiting the scope of the contract to what we can confidently complete strictly within 2020, which is far from ideal, or shifting everything to Estonia (incurring additional costs and inconvenience for us, though it may be the best option in the long term). Or just take a punt and cross our fingers that it all turns out ok, despite there being as yet no hint of a sketch of a plan as to how the sales of services into the EU will be regulated or taxed past 2020. It is quite possible that we'll just shut down the (very modest) operation and put our feet up. 

I'm still waiting for the brexiters to tell me how any of this is in the country's interests. But that's a rant for another day. Perhaps it's something to do with having enough of experts.

As for scoring my predictions: the idea of a “proper scoring rule” is to provide a useful measure of performance for probabilistic prediction. A natural choice is the logarithmic scoring rule L = log(p) where p is the probability assigned to the outcome, and with all of my predictions having a binary yes/no basis I'll use base 2 for the calculation. The aim is to maximise the score (ie minimise its negativity, as the log of numbers in the range 0 to 1 is negative). A certain prediction where we assign a probability of p=1 to something that comes out right scores a maximum 0, a coin toss is -1 whether right or wrong but if you predict something to only have a p=0.1 chance and it happens, then the score is log(0.1) which in base 2 is a whopping -3.3. Assigning a probability of 0 to the event that happens is a bad idea, the score is infinitely negative...oops.

My score is therefore:
0 - 0.42 - .23 - .07 -1.32 - .07 = 2.11

or about 0.35 per bet, which is equivalent to assigning p=0.78 to the correct outcome each time (which is just the geometric mean of the probabilities I did assign). Of course some were very easy, but that's why I gave them high p estimates which means high score (but a big risk if I'd got them wrong). I could have given a higher probability to the temperature prediction if I'd bothered thinking about it a bit more carefully. The running one was the only truly difficult prediction, because I was specifically calibrating the threshold to be close to the border of what I might achieve. It might have been better presented as a distribution for my finish time, where I would have had to judge the sharpness of the pdf as well as its location (ie mean).

God's own marathon

I'd like to post about brexit but there's been absolutely nothing of note going on recently - truly it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

So instead of that, another race report.

Every year the British Masters Athletics Federation organises a Masters Marathon Championship event, usually as part of one of the autumn city marathons ("Masters" = veterans). This year it was in York, or more precisely the Yorkshire Marathon. England Athletics also organised an England vs Celtic Nations Masters Marathon match at the same event. It's all a bit of meaningless fun really but what with it being reasonably local and with nothing much else on, I decided to give it a go this year. I could have qualified for the England team (through being in the top 4 in my age category in Mancs) but offered my services to Scotland instead. 

Training was a bit desultory, I wasn't going to spend hot summer days trudging around on long runs so just squeezed in an abbreviated plan in the 12 weeks leading up to the event. It was never going to be a PB for me, and a half marathon in September where I barely broke 1:25 (about 3 mins slower than my best) confirmed this. Never mind, I had a smart Scotland (veteran) vest to wear!

Had been hoping to see a bit of York over the race weekend, as we had barely visited before, but the location of our Airbnb to the north, combined with the need to visit the start village on the Saturday afternoon to pick up a race bib, meant we didn't really have time or energy for much else. But we managed to find a decent pizza in the impressive old assembly rooms which was stuffed full with a bunch of mostly skinny oldish people eating unusually large dinners early on a Saturday evening. I don't think the staff knew what was going on. It wasn't quite as good a pizza as in Manchester or Leeds, actually, but seemed adequate for the purposes.

The airbnb was a bit further than I'd have liked to be from the start, but we had plenty of time to wander there in the morning mostly down a quiet cycle route. Loads of people were already stuffed into the starting pens - I've never understood why people want to spend so long standing around like that - and I hopped over the fence with about 10 mins to go and found myself among lots of England veteran vests. In what was an interesting novelty to me, the vets were all wearing race bibs with their age categories on their backs - this is what I'd had to pick up the day before - so we could tell who we were supposed to be competing against. This is a really good idea as usually when an old baldie hoves into view mid-race I have little idea whether they are a direct competitor or not and therefore whether I should try to beat them.

The race was fairly uneventful really - I wasn't that sure of my fitness so didn't risk going too hard. Unfortunately that meant that I got dropped just off the back of what would have been a useful group around the 2nd woman and ran most of the race solo which didn't help in what had become a steady breeze. Temperature was comfortable enough, we only had one very light spot of rain along with a bit of sun that never got too hot. For some reason there were a couple of pipe bands, subsequent web searching suggests they were probably local to York as I can't imagine why any would have come down from Scotland.

Went through halfway in just under 1:25, almost exactly the same as my recent half marathon, but slowed slightly for the second half as my lack of motivation and training started to tell. Nothing drastic though, and I finished in 2:52:52, nominally my worst proper marathon since 2016 (not counting the very mountainous Bentham race) but not really that bad considering. With the wind and lots of gentle undulations it didn't feel like quite as fast a course as Manchester, though runbritainrankings seems to think it was just as quick or even quicker. But that may have been biased by the number of vets peaking specifically for this event. Anyway it was a decent event and well organised apart from the minor annoyance of having to pick up the back bib in person rather than having it posted out as with the standard race number.

On the finishing straight I managed to find my pre-arranged flags and crossed the line waving them to a suitably mixed reception.

According to the results I was the 7th overall M50, but 5th in the BMAF championships (which you had to specifically enter separately) and the 1st member of the Celtic Nations team. Though these results don't seem to have been officially announced yet. I don't get a haggis as a prize or anything like that. Just an unfeasibly large garish pink t-shirt which has been donated to jules for her own sartorial experimentation.

2:46:41

jules has taken up triathloning. I'm a rubbish swimmer so am not really tempted. The cycling and running bit would be ok but there's not much fun in doing a race where I start by half-drowning myself and giving everyone else a 20 minute head start. Anyway she has done a couple of shorter pool-based events over the last couple of years but enjoys open water swimming so wanted to do one of those, which are more often the full Olympic distance (1500m swim, 40k bike, 10km run).

Leeds of course is the centre of the UK for triathlon, with not just the Brownlees but also the women's team (who are probably better than the men these days) mostly based there. So doing the Leeds triathlon was the obvious choice. As well as the UK age-group championships there was an international elite event following (part of the ITU World Triathlon Series).

We started out with the traditional pizza, which was very good but so small we had to get some more slices.

The morning was bright and sunny but quite cold. Compared to Windermere where we had been practising, the water was apparently not too bad at 15C.

One of these pictures contains jules, the other is the wave in front of hers.

This isn't jules, who had apparently just swum past without me noticing. She didn't want to wave in case she got accidentally rescued! She was a little faster than I'd expected and you really can't tell people apart in the water when they are all wearing wetsuits and hats. So I missed the fun of watching her struggle to get out of her wetsuit in transition.

A massive collection of very high-tech bikes. Together with jules' one. All surrounded by high fences and patrolled by security guards all night as you had to leave your bike there the night before.

   

Not much evidence from the photo but she was actually running in this pic! (It was uphill to be fair). And having been following her round the course, I didn't quite have time to get into the grandstand proper for the finish, due to the circuitous route and closed roads. But her hat is just visible over the barrier. There was also a live stream on the BBC website...ah here it is with no sound.

jules had worked out that she might be able to beat my marathon time....and sure enough...

She's been wearing the medal non-stop since the weekend! So I've got my work cut out over the winter to win back bragging rights....

Bentham marathon

I've always intended to limit myself to one marathon a year, as I reckon that's quite enough time and effort to be devoted to serious running. But a couple of years ago I did the 3 peaks race when it was scheduled 4 weeks after Manchester marathon and that worked out ok, so when local road club Bentham Beagles announced they were putting on a marathon 6 weeks after Manchester, it felt like it would be a bit rude to not turn up.

The event was being arranged by a couple there who wanted to mark their 100th marathon with a local event (yes, there really are people who do 100 marathons as some sort of hobby/challenge). The route promised to be extremely hilly, heading first due south over the fells and down to a section of footpath around Stocks Reservoir, before returning over Bowland Knotts - both main climbs reaching altitudes of well over 400m, with plenty of smaller bumps to negotiate and numerous "arrowed" sections where the gradient exceeds 14% and in one place 20%. In fact the total climb of around 1000m comfortably exceeds that of the famous Snowdonia marathon (which goes round Snowdon, not up it). Not quite what Manchester training had prepared me for but I did manage a couple of runs over parts of the course in preparation so had some idea what I was letting myself in for. 

Post-Manchester resting was going ok and the blisters had healed, but then the three weeks leading up to the Bentham race were spent travelling first to Stockholm and then London, finally returning home around 10pm Friday night with the race starting at 9am on Saturday. Not quite ideal pre-race preparation, but never mind. I was determined to make it a fun run rather than going flat out, as it was never going to be a fast time. The on-line registration system provided a list of entries, and with a limit of 100 runners it wasn't too hard to do some stalking and work out that there quite probably wasn't going to be anyone properly fast (which means faster than me, of course). 

I guessed that a few of them might well set off a bit ambitiously at the start, however. Therefore a plan was hatched to try to go as easily as possible while keeping in touch with the leaders for the first half, before potentially pushing on a bit harder in the second half. Sure enough, a few people did charge off ahead but not ridiculously so, stretching out to a lead of up to a minute as we started up the first main climb. I think I was about 6th at one point, but soon enough a couple of the early leaders started to fall back and shortly afterwards I found myself running alongside one other guy who seemed quite experienced (he informed me that he had been pretty good in decades past with a ~28 min 10k to his name). We slowly reeled in the leaders, eventually forming a group of three for the last steep descent to the half-way mark.

The long-time leader stopped for a break at the reservoir (turned out to have foot problems) but Mr 28min was still going well and I didn't want to leave it to the last 10k in case he still had a turn of speed! (For context, my 10k PB is outside 37 mins, anything under 29 mins would be one of the leading times nationally.) So as we hit the second big hill I put a bit of effort in and was pleased to find he didn't respond. 3 miles later I had a quick snack at the top of Bowland Knotts and he was nowhere to be seen. I had time for a couple of pics on the way down...

jules had cycled out to meet me around the 20 mile mark and told me I had a decent gap so I just kept going at a sensible pace hoping my legs wouldn't fall off. I haven't done such a long or hilly run since the three peaks in 2017 so wasn't sure how the last few miles would go. Turned out just about ok and I finished in a time of 3:24, almost 9 mins clear of second.

The allocation of number was purely alphabetical!

Pic: Andrew Swales

Almost always road races are really just a time trial for me with the aim being to go as fast as possible over the distance so it was fun to be able to actually "race" for once without worrying about the time. And the event was very well organised with plenty of well-stocked refreshment stops. Obviously running 99 marathons previously meant the organisers knew what needed to be done!

Here's the strava log:

For posterity

Should have been quicker off the mark with the screenshot, cycling legend Gethin Butler pipped me last weekend at Brighton. This is the runbritainrankings list of UK marathon performances this year so far, in the male V50 category.

Of course the top guys tend to run London which is at the end of the month, so I'll be bumped a fair way down the order shortly. Not to mention the other various marathons through the rest of the year. I'll probably be around 20th eventually.

2:47:15

Another year, another Manchester marathon, another perfect day with perfect cool, still, cloudy weather and perfect organisation, another PB, shaving 89 seconds off the time I managed last year. A lengthier blog is posted here for those who are interested in these things. It was a good run for me and although I did dream of 2:45 (and set off aiming for that time) I wasn't quite up to it in the end. Finished 3rd in the V50 category (out of about 800 or so) which was a little stronger than in previous years as the event is growing in size and reputation so the field is strengthening. I was actually more than 40 places lower in 167th place overall despite the faster time.

Soon: off to Stockholm to finish off some work we've been very lackadaisical over for the past couple of years. That will be worth some blog posts when it's done. Hopefully we'll still be in the EU or else the travel might be...interesting.

Oh, this marathon result means one of my predictions has failed. Well, I only gave myself a 60% chance, so this was only a marginally less favoured outcome. The remaining 5 all seem well on track.

Predictions

Tim Harford says that the act of making predictions makes for better people (based on this paper). I've always enjoyed making predictions so I suppose I should be pretty wonderful by now. Hmmm...well in fairness he was only suggesting an association not a guarantee. In the hope of improving myself a little further, I offer the following:

1. Brexit won't happen (p=0.95).
2. I will run a time (just!) under 2:45 at Manchester marathon (p=0.6).
3. Jules and I will finish off the rather delayed work with Thorsten and Bjorn (p=0.95).
4. We will also submit a highly impactful paper in collaboration with many others (p=0.85).
5. 2019 will be warmer than most years this century so far (p=0.75 - not the result of any real analysis).
6. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase (p=0.999).

To Boulderly Go (and come back again)

As I think was probably guessed, we were in Boulder recently. It was just a holiday this time, we didn't get closer to NCAR than the cafes in the mall at the bottom of the hill. There may be photos to follow.

As well as discovering that a local parkrun had recently been set up literally minutes from our apartment (what are the odds of that, with only a dozen events across the entire USA?) our trip coincided with the Bolder Boulder 10k race again. I have by now improved to the extent of qualifying for the first “A” wave for runners with a sub-38 min time (and also for sub-2:55 marathoners, which for me was rather easier to achieve). Though these results were not achieved on an uphill course at altitude so I didn't expect to go that fast in the BB!

I had vague ambitions to break 40 mins but without much proper training and on such a difficult course that was always going to be a tough challenge for me. I was just about in touch with that pace most of the way round but there's a bit of a climb to the finish which killed any plans for a fast finish so I didn't quite manage it. Just past the finish line there were people handing out vouchers for t-shirts for anyone who broke the 40 min threshold. If I'd known about them I might have tried a bit harder! On looking up last time I see they were advertising the sub-40 t-shirts back then too so I think they are probably a regular feature. Still, a 3 min PB is not to be sniffed at I suppose. Jules also took about 3 mins off her previous result.

A nice solid heel strike there...I must have been going downhill :-)

Maybe next time I'll manage to whittle off another 30 secs for the t-shirt. If there is another time. The whole trip was lots of fun so I'm sure we'll be back.

After the race (and a short breather) we cycled up into the mountains for lunch with our friends Rob and Elizabeth. They had thoughtfully moved a bit closer to town so it was only an hour up hill. And rather less back home.

2:48:44

Another year, another PB.

This year the marathon was scheduled for the Sunday immediately before the EGU. However we weren't committed to that so I entered anyway when they sent me an early bird discount offer. The Vienna marathon was also a week too late for a combined work/run trip.

Later on we started to think about the EGU trip, and realised that it was actually possible to run the marathon, go straight to the airport, and hop on a plane to Vienna. The marathon is on the south side of Manchester and really very close to the airport. Parking the van in the city centre can be difficult due to height barriers so rather than a hotel we found an airbnb in a residential area a couple of miles south of the race start which proved to be very convenient. There was even a fabulous pizza just down the road. Probably the best we've had this side of the Japan Sea, in fact. A proper soft chewy crust with a few crispy bits and plenty of topping.

Under usual circumstances, one between two would have been reasonable, but these were not usual circumstances! We staggered back and collapsed into bed.

Sunday morning dawned cold, cloudy and still. It would be hard to imagine a better day for a marathon. I forced down a bit more breakfast before packing up and heading off to the start. Didn't see anyone I recognised, but I hadn't really expected to. There was a club-mate somewhere a bit further back in the field but as I had last time I hopped the barrier close to the front and tried to position myself among other people aiming for a similar time. After a good winter of training I'd been starting to dream of the magic 2:45 (the threshold at which I could enter the Championship race at London and line up alongside people such as Bekele and Mo Farah etc) but didn't think it was that likely. 2:50, on the other hand, I was confident of beating, having come reasonably close to it last year. During training I had beaten my half marathon PB by about 100 seconds, which logically should be worth comfortably than 3 mins over a marathon. However, while the running had been going well, there had been a lot of other stuff happening that had meant I hadn't been sleeping well for a while. You never quite know what's going to happen on the day either.

So I set off around 2:47 pace, feeling ridiculously comfortable as you do when your legs are fresh after a gentle couple of weeks tapering. Settled into a comfortable pace, trying to stay in groups of similar speed. Seemed to be going well, I had dreams of a fast second half but made sure not to try too hard too early. I't do 20 miles or so, then sprint past everyone with a fast last 10k.

Around half-way there's a section where the course doubles back on itself and we saw the leaders coming back. Two Kenyans glided effortlessly past.

and then after what seemed like an age but was probably less than 30 seconds, a bunch of brits appeared. One of the Kenyans appears to have dropped out later but the other won by a few minutes. Only 2:21, the best runners aim for London of course.

Somewhere around this point I caught up with one of the elite female runners, and we ran together for a few miles. I later discovered that she had a best time of 2:37 and ran in both the Commonwealth Games and European Champs back in 2010. Not bad company to be keeping. Up to mile 20 and even a little beyond I was doing fine, but gradually things started to hurt - especially my left hip and leg which have been the weak spot before, so either I'm slightly weak on that side or slightly lopsided in running. The planned fast last 10k became a fast 4 miles then a fast 5k and although I did try pushing on the pace just a little bit at that point ("it's just a parkrun!"), I soon reverted to damage limitation and decided to just keep on plodding on in the hope that I wouldn't fall apart too badly. This worked pretty much ok, I did lose a minute over this section to Holly who kept on at a steady speed but that's not too bad in the great scheme of things. The two halves were 1:23:28 and 1:25:16 which is only a positive split of 1:48, a touch higher than ideal but hardly shameful. Despite this slowdown I did move up over 40 places in the second half.

Food and water worked fine again with my own bag of jelly babies and kendal mint cake washed down by the supplied bottles. I really wasn't hungry or under fuelled at all after the pizza though. Perhaps with hindsight I could have splashed on a bit more water towards the end of the race when I wasn't interested in drinking. Fixing the left leg problem might have the biggest impact. It isn't causing a problem now three days later so there isn't a real injury problem, it's just not quite as good as the other one. Oh, and a pair of magic nike sub-2 shoes though even finding a pair would be a bit of a miracle. A 3 min PB is a pretty big improvement at this stage in my running career and at this age, but one disappointment with my result is that I didn't get quite as much as half-way to 2:45. That still seems like it may be a step too far for me. We'll see...

Anyway, here is my official result and here it is on Strava:

Running hot...or not?

The question has been asked (repeatedly): are the CMIP models “running hot”? By which it is not meant, are the models too warm - they have a wide range of temperature biases which are normally subtracted off by the use of anomalies (which is a separate debate) - but whether they are warming up too much relative to observations.

But I don't care about that, because I've been running too! It's been a bit warm in Hamburg and humid too, so I was a bit apprehensive about this morning's half marathon up and down a bit of river bank at the north edge of the city. 

However I didn't need to worry about that, it was grey and chilly this morning. What I should have been more concerned about is the lack of recent training and surfeit of pastries (not to mention currywurst).

It's a funny affair with another identical half marathon going off 20 mins ahead of us, that being the “Cup” event (part of a series of three races). (Fortunately I didn't find that web page until just now or I might have had to enter all of them.) But the cup runners are not all that quick, so I spent most of the race overtaking them. This wasn't really a problem as the small field of 500 runners was fairly well strung out by the time I caught them. The course was a riverside path, just hard-trodden earth which was mostly dry but a little slippery in parts.

It wasn't all as flat and smooth as this!

Plenty of sharp turns and short rises too. Despite being about 500m too short, it was still a personal worst, slower even than my very first half marathon when I'd never run that far before! 9th finisher in my race in 1:29:14, 2nd MV45 and also well beaten by one woman who was 2nd overall.

Bishop's Castle Tandem Triathlon

We were aware of this annual event many years ago before we went to Japan. However, back then I didn't run and jules was not that regular a swimmer, so we never got round to entering it. The last couple of years since returning from Japan it has clashed with our local club triathlon so it was only this year that we finally got round to doing it for the first time. It's a very informal event and the format is slightly non-standard in that the pool swim (1km), tandem ride (32km), run (10kmish) is followed by a final 5km tandem ride back to the event centre as the (trail) run is situated in a hilly forest some way out of town.

We drove down to Bishop's Castle the day before, not having worked out that this meant “enjoying” Friday evening rush hour on the M6...though it didn't turn out too bad as it happened. My Airbnb arrangement was a comedy of errors due to various communication problems and minor misunderstandings but it all turned out very well in the end and we found a decent pub dinner for pre-event calorie-loading - the traditional high-fat high-beer version as pioneered by yours truly for previous marathons (e.g. 1, 2). The airbnb had a little kitchen so we made quite a success of breakfast too. Theresa May take note!

Our start time was 10:52 which gave plenty of time to digest the bacon, black pudding, potato scone, egg, tomato, beans, mushroom, cereal, croissant, banana, yoghurt (albeit not all on the same plate). Oh, and we also managed a good look at the chaos taking place in the pool before jules had to jump in and join it. There were 4 lanes each with about 3 swimmers splashing up and down who had been theoretically laned according to their predicted swim times, but it seems they were mostly lying or, perhaps we may charitably say, mistaken as to their prowess. Jules ended up overtaking her breaststroking lanees multiple times but if anything this seemed to spur her on to a sub-19 min time, comfortably ahead of expectations. Then she made a quick switch of googles for specs and on the with the shoes and helmet and off we were on the bike.

The bike leg was great, it was fun to go properly fast again on a fairly flat course on A and B roads. There were plenty of tandems ahead of us to chase down around the course and one quite steep hill that we had to do twice (the route being a lap and a bit). Up the hill for the second time and I had to jump off and head into the forest for a moderately hilly run. That was really hard under what was by then a very hot mid-day sun. Even trees don't provide much shade when the sun is vertically overhead! There were times that I seriously considered stopping/walking/lying down in a ditch but fortunately water bottles handed out on course stopped me from expiring. I didn't even get a rest while changing shoes as due to the double transition I'd decided to just ride in running shoes and old-fashioned toe clips (which worked out fine, it didn't really handicap us on the bike). Back on the bike and downhill to the finish was a bit of a blur and then we forced down some food and drink before watching the later teams come in.

 

Perhaps "lying down in the sun while people ride past" would be more precise!

(top two pics from Sandy Plenty, bottom one by jules)

Chip timing and a live-updated web page (apparently for the first time this year) meant we could immediately see how well we had done and who of the remaining competitors was likely to be close...initially we were the first mixed team and 2nd overall....and then one more male team came in ahead...but all the mixed teams were a bit slower! Making us the national mixed tandem triathlon champions for 2017. Possibly world mixed tandem triathlon champions too, as this may be the only event of its type in the world. And we were first vet (over 40) team of any gender too. Jules has been basking in her multiple QOMs on strava, even though I somehow still managed to complete the first lap some 8 seconds faster than she did :-)

To be fair, all the fastest women are on tandems, this is clearly a route that only tandemmers race round (it's not an official RTTC course). So we don't feel too guilty about the ranking. We're hoping to return to defend our title...

Peak performance

A few weeks ago, I took part in the annual Three Peaks Race (spring version). In contrast to the autumn version that jules and I helped to marshall, participants in the spring event do not have to carry a bicycle but may walk or jog unencumbered bar a waterproof layer and bar of chocolate. Not too much walking though, as the time cut-offs are fairly severe. A 4 week gap from Manchester Marathon was plenty of recovery time, at least that was the theory. As the date approached I realised I wasn't really that motivated to aim for an optimal performance, and just set myself the target of getting round without too much of a struggle.

The race, as you might have guessed, takes in the famous three peaks in the Yorkshire Dales, which are conveniently located just a few miles up the road from us. So I had no excuse for not knowing what I had let myself in for, and had done a couple of "2 peaks" training runs, though never yet covered the full race distance. Recent weather had been dry making for very fast and easy conditions, with few of the usual bogs. But it's still 38km and 1600m of climb and descent. 

There were several other club members entered, including one who was probably going to be a bit quicker than me. I set off steadily and as expected he gradually pulled away over the first hill, eventually disappearing out of sight. Very much to my surprise, I caught him up around half way, he had a bad day and finished rather slowly.

Jules came to support and hand me my water bottle at the pit-stops where the course crosses roads, for which I was grateful on an unusually hot day for April.  She also took a couple of photos of course:

Runners heading towards Ingleborough

What do you mean "that's not much of a peak"?

I had a reasonably successful day, finishing comfortably under 4 hours though really I think most people would hope to take less than an hour more than their marathon time, especially with such good conditions. The women's record was well broken by Victoria Wilkinson, the men's record was not after the leader managed to head off the wrong way down Pen-y-Ghent. I think one or two veteran records went too.

In honour of the event, I have composed a haiku:

Ah Pen-y-Ghent ah
Ah ah ah Whernside ah ah
Ah Ingleboraaargh...

With apologies to Basho, although interestingly it seem that one of his most famous poems was not actually written by him.

BlueSkiesResearch.org.uk: Ich bin ein Hamburger

We are currently at MPI Hamburg courtesy of Thorsten Mauritsen. Just here for the week but planning a longer visit later in the year. I haven’t been here before, and jules has not particularly great memories of a brief meeting elsewhere in Hamburg 20 years ago, so the city has been a pleasant surprise so far. Got here yesterday just in time for a jog to the lake and back in the Sunday afternoon sun, followed by a somewhat disappointing hamburger,  so hopefully we’ll have a chance to put that right later this week.

First thing this morning we gave short seminars which was great timing as it now means everyone else knows who we are and what we’ve been doing. That’s something we failed to manage so well at NCAR last year. Most of the joint interest concerns the use of paleoclimate simulations to test and validate different versions of their new/forthcoming climate model.

The building is interesting though jules can’t help but wonder if disillusioned modellers are ever tempted to take the short-cut down from the 4th floor…

2:51:46

Marathon time has come round again. Jules and I decided against a trip to the EGU this year, having just recently gone to the AGU instead. So instead of Vienna Marathon, it was back to Manchester, who had kindly offered an extra discount to make up for the disasters of last year (which didn't actually affect us much as it happened). Due to a clash with some men kicking a pig's bladder around a muddy field, all hotels were getting booked up and expensive quite early on, but I still found a room for a tolerable price, this time at the Horrible Inn Media City, which actually failed to live up to its name by being rather comfortable and coping well with an influx of runners (surely not their usual clientele).

We suddenly realised as the event approached that it didn't really make much sense for jules to waste a weekend and come too, we'd already done The Lowry and it's not that exciting to stand around for 3 hours watching hordes of unknown joggers in Manchester suburbs for the second time. So when I realised that William was also doing it I suggested sharing the room with him, which actually worked out very well as we had a good chat over dinner about the dismal state of climate science while setting up the highly scientific pasta v meat experiment (meat proved to be the winner):

We had a relaxed approach to race day: a decent lie-in, getting up for a leisurely breakfast before strolling the mile down the quayside to the start just in time to hop into the runners' pens. Bumped into Settle Harriers club-mate Fraser who was aiming to cruise round in a comfortable sub-3 (he's much faster than me overall, but wasn't trying too hard for his first road marathon) but otherwise didn't know anyone near the front.

The bag drop (finish area) was actually a fair bit further away, so we just left our stuff at the hotel to return to later. I sacrificed an old unloved t-shirt to the start line gods, don't think WMC even bothered with that as it wasn't cold. As it turned out the organisation was very good this year, with none of the problems of previous events.

I didn't have that much to go on speed-wise: a pitiful 1 sec PB at 10k (39:21) on Boxing Day, a tolerable 1:23:01 half marathon at Blackpool in Feb (though that's not really much better than last year's 1:25:40 at hilly Haweswater). But training seemed to be going ok with no illnesses or setbacks so I thought I should aim a bit higher than last year and plucked 2:50 out of thin air as a possible albeit optimistic target, at least as a starting pace.

Didn't have any arranged running company this time but got chatting to someone on the start line also aiming for 2:50. "Last year I did 2:51, went off far too fast and did the first half in 1:21 then collapsed, won't do that again". Sure enough the second we got over the start line he shot off into the distance. I went past him again at about 18 miles :-) At that point I was still going pretty well and was perfectly on course for my target, but then the 21st mile marker took a long time to arrive and my legs started to hurt and there's still quite a long way to go from there. So I lowered my sights to just getting round the rest as comfortably as possible, and didn't worry too much about the seconds that were slipping away, at first a trickle, but a flood by the end. Can't be too disappointed with the final result of 2:51:46 which is a three minute improvement on last year, though actually a random sampling of strava results suggests that part of this is due to a shorter (but still legal) course. In a way it's a relief that I'm not close enough to 2:45 for this (which would gain entry to the Championship at the London Marathon) to be a serious target, at least for the time being. There are things I could have done a little better for sure (like a few slightly longer runs), but I don't really see where 7 mins improvement could come from.

Food-wise, I had a chunk of home-made Kendal mint cake and a couple of jelly babies every 2nd water station, at least until near the end at which point I couldn't really face any more. Took the water each time, as much to to splash on my hat as to sip. It was a touch warmer than most of my training, but otherwise perfect conditions. Alcohol-free beer at the end was very gratefully received though it took a little while to sip. Hung around in the finish area long enough to pick up a second pint for the stroll/hobble back to hotel. Club-mate came in at 2:56 looking very relaxed. Don't think I'll beat him again!