Mud, Floods, Day Length and JHJ
Jolly Holly Jog
It was a great disappointment to all Ripon Runners, who had worked so hard toward making our annual JHJ the best ever, when we had to cancel the event on Sunday 27th December. I was out with our safety officer, John Grundy, at 6.30am inspecting the bridge next to the Studley Park Lake. John had been out since 5.30! The bridge was absolutely impassable due, not only to dangerously high flood water but also to the large amount of debris backed up on the bridge. We had no way of knowing whether the structure was damaged as well. Even if we could have gone ahead most of the 900 entries would have failed to arrive due to extensive flooding throughout the North. Ripon Runners are never to be put down so we have been able to rearrange the Jolly Holly Jog for 24th January. Any later and there would have been too many calendar clashes. A big thanks to Tim Joynson, race director, and all the other volunteers for agreeing to commit for a second time.
December Running
In spite of record rain and floods, see below, Ripon Runners still managed some momentous achievements in December. Not in December of course but how impressive was it to get out there on New Year’s Day and compete in the Hardmoors 30 and the Captain Cook Fell Race. Honours in the first went to Claire Baker 7th lady overall in a time of 5hrs-4min. In the Fell Race, Sally Houghton was 10th female but even more noteworthy was the fact that in both events the boys were beaten (chicked) by the girls for first Ripon place!
Rudolph Romp was also run in atrocious conditions but husband/wife team, Jo and Iain Wallace completed the 24mile event in 4hrs-21, closely followed by Simon McCudden and Tim Joynson.
The Frostbite 30 run from Pateley Bridge proved quite an epic with normal benign streams becoming raging rivers. It is enough that the 30 mile event was 34 miles with 4,500ft of ascent but the condition of the rivers, in spite of support ropes, proved to be an unpleasant challenge to our heroes of the day; Paul Walker first for Ripon followed by a surprisingly large contingent of Doug Scott, Matt Holt, Claire Baker, Billy and Lena Conlin, Sheena Jackson, Claire Jamieson and Nicole Sutton. Many competitors finished in the dark.
Finally I must praise the extraordinary achievement of Lena Conlin who by the end of 2015 had run every day of the year. In 365 days she had completed 482 runs with a total ascent of 190,580 ft over 2,040.8 miles, She had run for 17days and 7hrs including an Iron Man and 24 hr 100 challenge. Quite staggering!
December Weather
Unlike most sporting people runners do it in all weathers! Therefore we are more sensitive than most to mud, floods, rainfall, temperature and day length but still we get out there. December has proved to be the wettest and interestingly, the warmest on record. There was at least one day when the temperature reached 15deg contrasted with one July day when the temperature did not exceed 11deg! We have only had the mildest of frosts. The corollary of all this warmth and rain is that we have suffered only 2/3rds our normal hours of sunshine so I suggest that you keep taking the Vitamin D supplements!
Sunrise, Sunset and Solstice Dates
As I get older it is not the weather so much as the short days that depress me. We are all aware that the shortest day (winter solstice) falls around the 21st December, in 2015 both the 21st and 22nd had only 7hrs 24min between sunrise and sunset. Why then does it still feel as if dark mornings have hardly altered even though we are 3 weeks on from the solstice? This is partly explained by the different dates of the latest sunrise and the date of earliest sunset. The earliest sunset actually occurred on December 13th and 14th at about 15.44hrs, well before the shortest day. However the latest sunrise was on December 24th at 8.23hrs and continued at this time, each morning until January 3rd, a full 12 days after the shortest day! Obviously the sunset times started to draw out from the December 14th onwards. It is only now, January 10th that we start to see those dark mornings get earlier but still by only 4 minutes compared to the period Dec 24th – Jan 3rd. However from the earliest sunset time, Dec 14th we have on Jan 10th already gained 23mintutes in the evening!
You will now be asking, why these discrepancies in the sunrise, sunset and shortest day dates? Well it is all down to the non-circularity of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. All fascinating stuff I hope you will agree.
CJB-11th Jan 2016