Coal Race 2012

[Cookie]

18 hours to go.

[SpageHopkins]

Hope you manage to sleep OK

[Cookie]

Hope you manage to sleep OK

Not the best. Poorly child.

Not feeling too bad though this morning.

[Cookie]

4th out of 25 in my heat. An improvement of 5 places on last year & 8 seconds faster. Will be a few days before we get the overall results from the 2 heats. I'm wanting top ten overall which would seal the two goals we'd set for this years race.

Can't remember ever hurting that much in my life.

[Cookie]

Apparently one guy was taken to hospital after the race. Just waiting for clarification that its true & the guy is okay.

[samurai69]

Apparently one guy was taken to hospital after the race. Just waiting for clarification that its true & the guy is okay.

thats why the ambulance went off

[Cookie]

Brought a couple of points up about the coal & coal sacks used in yesterdays race & it would seem I wasn't the only one who was of the same thinking.

My post:

Huge thanks to everyone involved in yesterdays race & well done to all those that finished it. Great day & a credit to all those involved.

Just a couple of points & I hope these don't come across the wrong way. Any chance the sacks could be slightly larger or of a softer weave than the ones we used? Don't know if this was just mine but where the seams were sown there was no give in them to get a decent grip. I still had indentations in my hands from those sharp edges/seams some hours afterwards. Surprised I didn't cut my palms they were that hard/sharp. I'm sure the sacks we used in 2009 weren't that tough/rigid.

Also did anyone else have issues with the coal clumping up into one single solid mass? Got mine off the coal truck & suddenly realised the left hand side was about 10 kilos heavier & no amount of jumping up & down like a lunatic on the start line would break it down & spread it more evenly across my shoulders. Spent the entire race bent over much further than I should have been or had done in training because the sack/coal was so solid with no give in it what so ever. With hindsight I wished I'd dropped it on the road before the start just so I could have broken the coal up & got it looser. An advantage I suppose given to those of running in the second heat because by then the coal has been pounded & broken up a little more by those running in the first heat.

Reply:

Hi Steven - thank you very much for your feedback - the Maypole Committee welcome any feedback that is provided. It helps us to improve the Coal Race for both competitors and spectators in future years. First of all I would just like to start by acknowledging the points you have raised as completely valid but on this occasion the circumstances that caused these matters were beyond the control of the organisation committee. The sacks of coal are sourced from a local coal merchants and have been for a number of years. The sacks of coal are collected for us on Good Friday by the company who provide the lorry transport that you see on the day of the races. The transport company store the sacks of coal on their premises until the next day (Easter Saturday) where a team of people meet to sew up the sacks. As we had two men's races this year (up to 35 in each race) 40 sacks of coal were ordered, this was to account for any sacks which may burst in the first race and so we could quickly replace them without delay. We also ordered 30 sacks of coal for the women's race. In previous years there has been no discernable difference in the size of the sacks but as part of the team sewing them up on Saturday we found that we had little room to sew the majority of the sacks up - the sacks appeared to be very new and were clean and white and so we acknowledge that there wasn't as much give in them as ones used in previous years - perhaps the coal merchant thought he was doing us a favour by providing clean new sacks! Under normal usage these sacks would not be sewn up and therefore the merchant has no reason to have larger sacks - I imagine smaller sacks are cheaper as well - just not good for coal carrying championships. As you can imagine there was little or anything we could do about this as the races are on the Monday and the coal merchants are closed by the time the potential problem was recognised, so we had to live with what we had been given. What we can promise to do is to work with the coal merchant to try to ensure we get coal sacks that are of a more suitable size and ones that are of a more pliable material and with less rigid seams. With regard to the coal clumping up, I think this may have been a combination of 'settle' over the weekend and lack of room in the sacks to move the coal around. I do hope these issues didn't spoil the event too much for you and your comments and concerns have been noted and will be acted upon as we were aware of them already and had planned to work with our supplier to resolve this for next year - but thank you for also raising this with us. If anyone else has any comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch - this is your event as much as ours and we want it to be a successful as possible - without competitors there is no race. Many thanks Steven.

[samurai69]

seems that way

[Cookie]

Update on heat & overall race times.

I finished fourth in heat 1 with a time of 5.31.8.

That's 7th overall

This all breaks down to an improvement of 5 places in my heat & 4 places overall whilst knocking off 11 seconds from last year.

Over the moon.

[Cookie]

Race report

[Cookie]

Race times.

http://www.gawthorpemaypole.org.uk/?page_id=82

[Vikingfan]

Congratulations on your position
.I remember finding the coal carrying championships by searching for reviews of Vivo barefoots and I added it to my favourites with a view to entering it (but I did not see the date at the time).Well I looked again at the website (Sunday) and found it was on easter Monday.Too late to even think about it.
I will definitly be interested in entering that next year.
When I found your reviews I remembered I was a member of this forum.