Serpiesphere Virtual 5k – Week 13 (4th to 10th July 2020)

Hello Serpies,

Thanks to all 73 Serpies who ran in last week’s Serpiesphere Virtual 5k. We’d like to give you a quick update of the race series, as well as the results of Week 12 and the start of Week 13!

With the “lockdown” easing and the club sessions restarting, we should update you on the future of this race series.  We are all blown away by the phenomenal demand of this weekly race, therefore it is only right that the virtual 5k becomes a long term Serpie event! (Such is the success that I have even written an article on the Serpentimes about it – please follow here.) This is the plan:

  • The current weekly 5k series will continue until the middle of August. The last week will coincide with the club 5k championship (from 9th to 16th August).  Therefore on 17th August, not only will there be a handicap winner for that week, as usual, there will also be the Club’s 5k champions for 2020, as well as the overall Serpiesphere Lockdown champion.
  • Beyond the club champs, the race will continue as a regular event.  The format will be decided, including frequency and overall scoring.  Comments and ideas welcome – please email me. We will communicate further in August.

Thanks to everyone who got in touch and told us how much you have loved this race – now we hope everyone will keep running, including this week! Remember no time is too slow and nowhere is too alien for the Serpiesphere, the more really is the merrier.

 

Last week’s Virtual Podium

Congratulations to the following runners for being on the Virtual Podium:

  1. Mark Smith suggested the name ‘Serpiesphere’ when we first started, and in Week 12 he finally won the race he named for us!  He ran a speedy 23:05, with a handicapped time of 58:35.
  2. Carol Wu came back to the podium this week, having run 25:12 (handicapped time 58:42) in beautiful Western Sweden (see below a sunset picture taken at about 10:30pm – I must stress she didn’t actually run on water), as our first entry from Scandinavia.

Carol in Sweden

3. Aggela Despotidou improved her time by almost a minute to earn her place on the podium with a time of 28:26 (handicapped time 59:11).

Also, our fastest performers of Week 12 are:

  • Fastest Male, and also best age-graded performance: Scott O’Connor – running an amazing 15:52 in his first run of this competition (age-graded percentage 84.1%).
  • Fastest Female: Sarah Pemberton – with a brilliantly consistent time of 19:52 (only 2 seconds behind her time last week) to secure her second win in a row.

Full results here: https://www.serpentine.org.uk/rdb/showvirtual5k.php?race=13507.

 

This week – How to submit your time

  • Enter your time before 23:59 on Friday 10th July via this link: https://www.serpentine.org.uk/rdb/showvirtual5k.php?race=13508. Click “self-add result”, then scroll to find “Serpiesphere Virtual 5K” and choose “4 July 2020” (which includes all performances from 4th to 10th July).
  • Take a photo or screenshot that shows your time and distance, this can be a screenshot of your Strava / Garmin result page, or a picture of your watch. As long as the distance is a minimum of 5.00km (or 3.11 miles) and it shows a finish time, it will be accepted.
  • Submit the photo or screenshot at this link (also before 23:59 on Friday): https://www.dropbox.com/request/DAXAB7cOY3l0rrJEKbKn (this link can also be found in the same page as the “self-add result” page). Click the “+” sign on the page to ‘Choose Files’. You do not need a Dropbox account. This will just ask for your name (so we can correlate your performance with the time submitted) and email address (so you’ll get a confirmation of upload).

Email me if you are unable to do so. All members who have not done the race yet are welcome to join - you'll be a scratch runner this week so you won't be on the Podium; from next week onwards you will have a chance to win!

Also you are welcome to send the photos where you run – it is always fun to go through them in our virtual café and post the best one here in the round-up email.  Please note that by uploading the photos you have given us and the Club permission to use them. https://www.dropbox.com/request/DAXAB7cOY3l0rrJEKbKn.

 

The Lockdown Championship

The Top 10 after Week 12:

Runner

Total Score

Hilary Walker

139

Victoria Brown

118

Hugh Torry

117

Andrew Reeves

106

Stephanie Vaatz

103

Martin Carmack

103

Angeliki Despotidou

90

Keith Evans

90

Carol Wu

89

Maureen Seguin

89

 

 

 

Hilary Walker is still leading but the chasing pack is closing in. Let’s see what the next six weeks will bring us!  The full results are here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xvjfjltrzopox7g/Lockdown%20Champs%20after%20Week%2012.pdf?dl=0.

 

Serpiesphere Virtual Café – Saturday 11th July – NOTE START TIME & ZOOM LINK

As usual, we will be at the Virtual Café next Saturday.  Everybody will have a chance to do a Saturday morning run (including the club run at Hyde Park, hill sessions in Greenwich or Hampstead, or your own run) before logging in at 11:30am for an hour or so. It has been fun catching up with everyone across the Serpiesphere and doing the usual announcements – we look forward to seeing you there. The Zoom link is here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86215892764.

 

Once again thanks to my co-organisers Sarah Maisey, Nic Barberis, and Pete Mackintosh. Any queries about the race, please contact me or one of us.

 

Happy running,

Hans Ho

Participation Representative (participation@serpentine.org.uk)

Submitted: 5 July 2020

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