Congratulations to Andi Jones on being selected for the World's up at Edinburgh.
Printable View
Congratulations to Andi Jones on being selected for the World's up at Edinburgh.
I'll give him a shout :) as well as the rest of the GB runners and particularly Mitch Goose of my club. Edinburgh will give me a chance to run on some proper hills too :)
Good luck to Roadrunner for tomorrow:)
Good luck for tomorrows race Andi. Hope you have a good one.
Good luck Roadrunner.
(when is it on so I can plan to be at a television).
Good luck too to anyone going along. I went to watch the world champs about 1997 in Durham and I thought it was a good spectacle. When you see those runners at the front you see how fast and furious they go.
BBC TV at 2pm I think. Should be finished just in time for the Derby Liverpool v EvertonQuote:
Originally Posted by Chris
thanks for that Pinno, will make sure I watch or record.
Good luck Andi!
SPORT FIXTURE TIME FIXTURE TOURNAMENT CHANNELS & BROADCAST TIMES
12:55 Edinburgh World Cross Country BBC Interactive (12:55-14:00)
BBC2 (14:00-15:30) :cool:
also.....
http://www.iaaf.org/WXC08/index.html
Good Luck Andi - rip it up in Edinburgh
Shall plan my afternoon around it;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/listings...0_4224_9262_90
All the best Roady.
http://www.ukathletics.net/press-cen...8-world-cross/
80th place for Roadrunner
I have just sat down to watch it but SkyPlus says the recording failed due to "power cut". I am really fed up because I was looking forward to it and particularly seeing the course in Edinburgh.
Well done to Roadrunner.
Someone come on here and tell me what it was like and what I missed.
cant you watch it on bbc i player - watch again - you know 'now you cant miss the unmissbale'
seeing as its you chris I'll try and find you the link!
i see you are all waiting with baited breath - anyway -it doesnt appear to be there - you can re watch the cycling though ................
so you can actually miss the unmissable then!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categor...3Aalphabetical
Well done Andi and all the British runners today (male and female) you should be proud of your efforts. By god some of those Kenyans and Ethiopians are good. Bekele winning even after stopping to put his shoe back on was something else.
As for Brendan Fosters comments I felt he gave no positive support to any of our British Male runners instead after the mens race he bemoaned that its a pity some of our better athletes did not take part eg. (Paula Radcliffe).
Yeh, does BF ever come out with any different comments ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinno
I missed the cross country today because something went wrong with my SkyPlus recording. Therefore I didn't have to endure hearing Brendan Foster.
As a kid I loved athletics and I loved watching it on the telly, but if I was a kid now Foster would really turn me off with his dour commentary and his platitudes and his basic ignorance. No sport benefits from that kind of presentation. It is rubbish.
I think there is a bit of vested financial interest in it though which we aren't told about.
good point about BF, he did say it was amazing to see Bekele run etc and what he has achieved but his comments about the home athletes did seem sour, great effort roadrunner!
I was a little sad they didn't show all the athletes crossing the line, would only have taken a few more minutes!
Went to watch this - it was FANTASTIC!!!! Laura Park did really well in the junior women - she's a fell runner (or was!). And Andi came through really well - fantastic run. Well done everyone!!
Good point that Harrymoon it would have been a nice touch showing all the british athletes crossing the finishing line.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrymoon
Quote:
Originally Posted by crugnant
...and well done getting within 3.19 of Bekele!!. :eek:
I was there as well - I gave RR a few "Go on Andi" shouts! I stopped short of shouting "Go on RoadRunner" as the folk around me would have thought I was nuts! :D Great run though in what looked like challenging conditions. Might have a blast around the loops when they clear up!
Bekele is unbelievable, to lose his shoe and probably up to 100m on the leaders and win like that was incredible.
Good showing by some of the Yanks, their distance running is definitely on the up.
Excellent performance from Roadrunner...not that you'd have known it from the BBC.
However, with all due respect to our runners its easy to see why athletics is losing popularity. The BBC has shown hours of the World Cycling Championships in Manchester and we've ended up with 9 gold medals versus the World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh where we didn't have a runner in the top ten.
Wait until the Kenyans start cycling!
Well done Andi, I thought it was a well-judged race.
Just watched this on tv this morning, well done Andi, Brendan Foster should work for the FA, he is so negative
Haven't watched the tv coverage yet, but we did go to watch. Some truly awesome running on show. As has already been said, short of trying to race against these athletes (aye right) the best way to appreciate their sheer pace is to stand at close quarters and watch them glide effortlessly over the mud. I thought ALL of the GB athletes were tremendous - the junior women were 4th behind the Africans & Japan (so, had it been a European competition...). Let's wait to hear what Andi thinks about his own race, that'll be interesting.
As for Big Fat Bren - I haven't heard his commentary yet, but I still recall him panicking at the sight of Paula 'waving her arms around' while descending Haggis Knowe on that course a few years ago - ('She definitely doesn't look happy!'). Has he ever tried running downhill at top speed in the mud?
Felhell, funny you should say that, they wouldn't be much good at the sprints but I've often wondered what they and the Ethiopians would be like over longer distances on the bike.
Bekele has got unusually large thighs for a man his size and stature so I'm pretty sure he'd be a great cyclist
Big subject this and who knows what the answer is?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladerunner
But I think we need to be a little bit insular here and start looking after our own a little.
To much money and TV coverage is thrown at the Africans in terms of endurance running whether on track, road or XC.
We need the TV channels to feature more events like the Inter Counties.
I would suggest covering the Cross Challenge Series, it would be low cost or even free for any TV channel. I am sure UKA would roll over to have it covered, and then a sponsor may come in.
Then add in similar coverage for the British League in Track and Field, and maybe a team event such as the Mansfield XC Relays.
Cut out the foreigners, show the public how exciting these events can be, and develop some "Stars" within our own public domain.
We have Ben Fish at our club who was unbeaten in a track 10K, reigning Inter Counties Champion, and reigning Northern Champion, and he couldn't get in to the National AA 10K as he didn't have the time required. Only 7 active athletes had I recall.
How are we going to progress then if we cannot get our athletes in races to develop their potential?
How many track 10KM races are there this year? 2 or 3 - that's it.
Well done Andi and the rest of the athletes at Edinburgh. I didn't see the race as I was out at a track meeting, but just to be there is a huge achievement.
Good comments Witton. In full agreement with you on this one.
I agree too Witton - it's really great to get to watch our own athletes in events and having more diversity can only be a good thing.
Around 490 photos from the Edinburgh World Cross Country added here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisupson/sets/
Mr U - you seem to have a nice new camera! Photo's look really good - quite a few of RR in there....
Now I'm going to have to get a better camera pah! :)
Excellent photos Chris from Edinburgh.Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisU
Thanks guys! - I was trying to get the leaders, plus making sure I snapped the GB runners as well. I was using my Nikon D80 with 70-300mm Tamron lens.
I didn't fancy rushing round the course getting different vantage points since: a) it was very crowded, and I'd found a good bend as the runners crested the Haggis Knowe hill, and b) more importantly I was suffering from an horrific variant of Spanish food poisoning that meant running around would have been a very bad idea!
Witton, i don't know what the answer is. We seem to have become largely a nation of fun runners with only a very few at the sharp end.....and to be frank that sharp end is getting increasingly blunter! How come years ago we had 'loads' of men who could break 2.20 for the marathon and now we've got a handful? How come bar Mo Farah we don't have anyone capable of getting anywhere near the worlds best?
Its not just the rise of the Africans, look at this for a statistic of the top 50 UK 10,000m runners by pb not one of them was born in the 1980s and only 5 of them in the 70s (1971, 1972, 1972 and 1974) and of them to my knowledge only 2 of them are actively running still!!!
There have only been 2 times posted this decade that are fast enough to get in the top 50 and they were 5 years ago and 8 years ago
Of out top 10 10k runners of al time (based on pbs) 2 were born in the 40s, 6 in the 50s, 1 in the 60s (1964) and 1 in the 70s (1971)
Not to labour a point...but I will... there hasn't been one half marathon time since 2001 good enough to get in the top 50and only 2 men (brown and Steinle) make the top 70 marathon list from this decade.
I don't know what the answer is, its not my job, but surely someone should be asking the powers that be at UK Athletics what is being done to turn this round.
Perhaps we need to poach David Brailsford??!!
better quickly add thsoe stats are 1 year out of date so may have changed slightly, although I don't remember many distance times from last year?
I think you make great points Bladerunner.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladerunner
Even ten years ago there were teenagers who could run close to 2 minutes for 800 metres on no formal training because they weren't handicapped by non-competitive ideology and sedentary lifestyles. In my class of about 30 kids in the late seventies there were three fifteen or sixteen year old boys who ran that fast.
I think the 800 metres is a good benchmark for showing basic distance running talent.
In the seventies I sometimes went to Crystal Palace to run in open meetings. 150 kids would turn up to run three heats of 3000 metre races. There were 2 or three heats of senior men's 10,000 meters.
In those days BF was an idol every single one of us looked up to. Something went wrong though.
By the way, when I say three kids in my class could run 800 metres in 2 minutes, what I mean is these were boys and half the class were girls. Also, I wasn't one of the kids who could run that fast- I am 44 years old and it is still my ambition to do 800 metres in two minutes!
some great points on this thread! awesome pics too, enjoyed looking through them