Now in its twenty-somethingth year, the ‘Winter Mondays’ series of road and trail races provide the perfect antidote to the commencement of the winter working week. The combination of regular on and off-road ‘chasing start’ races are an excellent way to gain or maintain fitness through the winter months, to add leg speed, and/or to gain more confidence in night-time navigation and racing.
Off-road trail races use a variety of departure points to the west and north-west of the city; many of which will be familiar to members. There’s nothing especially difficult here in terms of navigation, although some sections of some routes may benefit from a daylight recce, and a fair amount of descriptive detail is included in the calendar entry for each race to assist the newbie, as well as links to individual race maps clearly showing the line and direction of travel. It’s also absolutely fine to run in pairs if you’d prefer some company. Full FRA kit must be carried as a minimum as well as a head torch, and a mobile phone in case of emergency and/or torch battery failure.
Road races are run every third week from Bolsterstone Church (or from Low Bradfield on occasion). Reflective vests and head torches must be worn. Please also carry a mobile phone in case of mishap.
Start times for both varieties of race are between 6pm and 6.30pm – typically the slow and more infirm from 6pm onwards, with the chasing pack leaving at regular intervals thereafter, and series whippets setting off around 6.30pm. There’s also a special dispensation for the over 70s, who are welcome to set off at any time before 6pm on the relevant Monday, with a view to finishing at some point before 7.30pm. If all goes to plan, this should result in a more or less competitive chasing finish.
Please sign yourself in before you set off, and add your self-recorded race time at the finish, using the R.O.’s shiny black clipboard (which you should find secured to the front/back of a slightly battered blue Skoda Roomster). Willy Kitchen, the R.O. (willykitchen@me.com), will always wait at the finish until everyone who has signed in has returned safely, and he’s also happy to make a note of your mobile phone number, and an emergency contact number in case of mishap, if you’re willing to share this. If you were to go off-piste, on either trail or road race, you would certainly not be the first to have done so.
Carsharing is also actively encouraged, so please do keep an eye on announcements on the DP website, facebook page, and club WhatsApp groups – including a Winter/Summer Series group created for precisely this purpose. Willy will aim to publish individual race results (calculated as a % of the winner’s time) within 24-hours or so of each race, so you can all keep your eyes firmly fixed on the vagaries of race bonuses (awarded for bettering your preceding race result), and their impact upon series standings (using your best twelve results).
History
Dave Tait, the original and inimitable ‘bit of a trod’ Carshare, is credited with the first incarnation of the Winter Mondays series, sometime in the early noughties, when they were all run on the roads – possibly in their very first format from Hunter’s Bar?
By the mid-noughties they’d moved to a regular spot from Bolsterstone Church to the north of the city, where they also attracted a fair few friends from Penistone Footpath Runners to the party. Nicky Spinks took over the organisation of the series in 2008, alternating one week on, one week off, with Keith Holmes’s decidedly fiendish hill rep sessions from the same venue – the source of much blood, sweat and cussin’ over the years.
As Nicky herself notes, “I started running the Winter Series in 2005 to 2006 when I needed to get faster for the Paddy Buckley. I don’t know when Dave started it. Keith would know as he was there from the start. There was also Rus Beresford and Ian Winterburn and Darren Unwin They were so accommodating to me on the hill sprints and I started doing an early start on the races as I was so slow (and got lost) so they were waiting around for hours (or came searching) for me.” How the mighty are risen!
For an almost complete back history of races and results, please see Nicky Spinks’ web pages. The current series organiser intends when time allows, and in the spirit of largely pointless Dark Peak endeavour, to pull together a definitive set of ‘fastest known times’ for various of the age categories – watch this space.