Tuesday 3 January 2017

Brutal Longmoor 2016, Serpentine NYD 10k, and new 2017 Gallery now live

Happy New Year !! For some.

Welcome to 2017, and the brave new world of our new gallery, hosted on Photoshelter. I'm not going to even mention how completely bonkers 2016 was, but if the laws of entropy are anything to go by - it's only going to get more mixed up. I hope you all had a fantastic holiday break, and if you were working in the office it was equally fantastic without everyone else there !

Please - if you have any thoughts or observations about the new gallery - please let us know on info@sussexsportphotography.com

Here's the quick list of last weekends events and some future races to enter.
If you prefer visual browsing - go to our top level gallery page (here) and navigate by year and month to where you want to go - we are putting future events up there too - with links to their websites so if you fancy a race in March 2017 for example - surf through and have a look to see what's on offer. 

All of 2016 galleries are on the new gallery - so you can now look back and compare and see how much better you look (now?)... and our plan is to back-populate all the other years (and 2015 can still be found on our old archive pages - which we have handily linked to).

Latest Gallery Listings

Date Event Live Race Gallery or future event website
Sat-31/12/2016 Brutal Longmoor 2016 http://sspimg.com/Brutal-Longmoor-Gallery-NYE-2016
Sun-01/01/2017 Serpentine NYD 10k 2017 http://sspimg.com/Serpentine10k-Gallery-2017
Future Races to Enter
Sun-08/01/2017 Tadworth Ten http://www.tadworth.org.uk/tadworth-ten/
Sun-22/01/2017 ETL Denbies10 http://www.eventstolive.co.uk/events/information/denbies-10m
Sat-28/01/2017 Brutal Men only http://brutalrun.co.uk/race/men-only-24-january-2016/
Sat-28/01/2017 Brutal Women Only http://brutalrun.co.uk/race/women-only/
Sun-05/02/2017 Gloucester Marathon beyondthelimitations.org.uk
Sun-05/02/2017 Watford Half http://bit.ly/watford-half-entry
Sun-05/02/2017 ETL Bookham 10k http://www.eventstolive.co.uk/events/information/bookham-10k
Sun-12/02/2017 Worthing Half Marathon http://bit.ly/worthing-half-2016
Sun-19/02/2017 Hampton Court Half Marathon http://bit.ly/Hampton-Court-Half-Entry

I hope you all managed to get what you wanted for Christmas, even if it was the much evasive "peace and quiet to all men" [Ed:that's a bit sexist ?]. We managed a quiet spell for almost three weeks from the 11th to the 31st of December - which was successfully taken up with admin tasks like doing the year end accounts - our annual moment of reflection and deep thought...

Droning on about drones
Let's get one thing straight - drones are fantastic things (I'm talking about the small ones with cameras, not the big ones with bombs, that's a whole other conversation) the images are superb and the landscapes and vistas that can be achieved are wonderful. 

Those of you who know me well will also know I'm not too keen on drones flying about at events with their sharp rotating blades and emptying batteries, mainly because they have a tendency to fall out of the sky and land on things (i.e. probably me). The good news - I did not get a drone for Christmas ! 

The bad news - for all you drone pilots out there (amateur and professional)- the recent update to the Air Navigation order - still means you have to keep them at least 50m away from anyone, and if it's busy (>1000 people at an event) or in town, you can't fly overhead, and you have to be 150m away from everyone. That's quite a long way away. If you've ever stood on a running track and tried to shout at someone only 100m away down the finishing straight - you can't - so 150m is a very good safe distance. (i.e. by definition - If you can hear me shouting delicate requests to the drone pilot - your closer than 100m)

Here's the best explanation online for all of you who might have a new toy for Christmas and want to give it a go : http://dronesafe.uk/drone-code/  - slide 4
Most of the events we attend have at least 1000 people attending when you add families, supporters and organisers staff - so I don't expect to see too many legally flying drones in 2017 except at a distance !! 

And now for some photos from this weekend including - some video stuff

Brutal Longmoor 2016 - New Years Eve
Top new years eve workout with friends

After while the water does smell a bit

Castanets anyone? "Hola!"

MAny thanks to the marshals

Excellent work all the way around

All looking busy in the event village

The casual look of pre-race nerves

Flying through the woods at speed

On fire

New Christmas hat gets a good workout

Brutal as a spectator sport

Sisters together

One of those new clapping hand hats

uh oh, what has he found

Towards the Shrubbery

mind the trip hazard

and it was all going so well

He was rushing through the invisible sand-bag carry

Meanwhile at the Serpentine New Years Day 10k - near perfect conditions prevailed - it rained very heavily about an hour afterwards ! Our tenth outing at the race.

There's a video of the start and another one of the finish on our facebook page here:

Apologies for the constant mini-cow-bell ringing in the background noise for the finish - it's the sort of occupational hazard we have to put up with at in the workplace ! welcome to our world.

To be fair - the winter wonderland doesn't look so amazing from here at the race start

Lead three through 2k - pulling ahead of the field

Josh hadn't quite realised that he was covering up his race number, rendering cataloguing almost impossible. They did however manage to look cool.

Sophie had a good run out for the Ealing Eagles

Milton Keynes flew in at the finish


Always good to see the junior runners storming home

Always good to see the parents being supported and encouraged in their New years resolutions

Emma looked serene as she cruised to victory

always good to have a wave on the way back in

Thoughtful statues look on at the hardworking 

it's just a lot of fun

Social Runners being - social !

Congratulations to the race director on the day who had to deal with unplanned infant swims, winter wonderland movement restrictions and vehicle escorting, vehicle park entry refusal by security (despite having only just exited past them) and a million other things that we never have to deal with as innocent observers of all this, on a bank holiday sunday !

Happy New Year !

I can only wish all of you best of luck with your New Year's Resolutions, race plans and anything else that you find inspiration and fun from. Some of you will be starting to run for the first time ever (good luck - don't worry it gets warmer later in the year), some of you will be deep into your long Sunday runs as you scale up for marathon season in April.
Me - I'm going to do 2000m on the indoor rower every day - something I feel I can commit to, and it's nice that it's easily recorded on the machine with no fancy straps, watches or anything else to forget. First two were 8m34sec, and my PB from over 15 years ago is 6m59sec - so there's plenty of scope for improvement. I just have to do it !
Other than that I'm sticking to the best thing that happened for me last year - and that's my Low Carb High Fat lifestyle (LCHF for short) and the 1.5st I lost to get back to 12st dead - there's a great video about it here, which is also quite funny: http://sspimg.com/lchf-explained-video
I use "lifestyle" instead of "diet" to describe it - because it's not really a calorie restrictive plan - which is what I take diet to mean. And I eat tons of nice food on it. Anyone for a bacon omelette ?

So live long and prosper - do new things, keep your network of friends and family familiar with your face (not just your voice), and share in the happy things.

Until next time
Anthony









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