Serpiesphere Virtual 5k – the End of ‘Lockdown’
Hello Serpies,
What a competition we have had in the past 18 weeks. As the Serpiesphere Virtual 5k Lockdown Series drew to a close last Sunday, here is a round-up of Week 18, as well as a summary of the whole Lockdown Championship.
Final Lockdown Week and Podium
Well done to the 71 Serpies who entered the final week’s race. Despite the hot weather, last week’s race coincided with the club champs, and this seemed to have brought out the best of us. 30 of us beat our best times. The female Serpiesphere record was broken, whilst the male record came mightily close to be toppled.
In true Serpiesphere spirit, we had performances from outside of the UK throughout the series, including the last week. Runners abroad included ‘Serpiesphere nomad’ Carol Wu running in the Netherlands, having previously recorded times in Austria and Sweden; Alexander Kolb in France; Catkin Shelley in Switzerland; Ian Johnson in Hungary; Kent Blocher in Connecticut in the USA; and, providing the last photo of the week (see below – taken in the Vatican), Sophie Taylor who ran her 5k this week in the sizzling Eternal City of Rome.
Congratulations to the following runners for their Virtual Podium performances:
- Clare Freshwater won the final race of the series with a brilliant run in Battersea Park, stopping the watch at 25:22 (handicapped time of 57:37).
- Rachel Bedford ran the exact same route as Clare, but was just a minute behind at 26:21. An over two-minute improvement secured her the second place (handicapped time 57:51).
- Liz Wilkinson put in a strong performance with a time of 25:19 to get herself on the podium (handicapped time 58:34).
Also, our fastest performers of Week 18 (and hence the 2020 Club 5k Champions) are:
- Fastest Male: Chris Wright returned to the race to become 5k club champion this year with a time of 15:36, just one second within the Serpiesphere Virtual 5k male record.
- Fastest Female: Jess Welborn produced a championship winning performance with a time of 17:54 – and broke her own Serpiesphere Virtual 5k female record.
- Best age-graded: Andrew Roberts won this week’s age-graded category with a time of 19:13, meaning an age-graded performance of 88.2%
Full results here: https://www.serpentine.org.uk/rdb/showvirtual5k.php?race=13518.
The Lockdown Championship – It’s the Final Lockdown!
The overall competition rewards those who participate, improve, or run genuinely fast times. Rewarding based on these aspects always has an arbitrary element to it, however those who are up there do deserve our appreciation. The Serpiesphere Virtual 5k Lockdown Champion 2020 is…
Hilary Walker – a well-deserved win with almost weekly improvement of her time since the beginning. Worth pointing out that being our Club’s President, she has been instrumental in helping the restart of our club runs, by volunteering and making vital contributions towards the club run operation. A little trophy will be on her way!
Also many congratulations to our Top 10 of the final Lockdown Championship Table:
- Hilary Walker – 202
- Hugh Torry – 196
- Andy Reeves – 182
- Victoria Brown – 175
- Stephanie Vaatz and Martin Carmack – 168
- Natalia Delfino – 148
- Sophia Holder – 143
- Richard Taylor – 137
- Grace Sim – 136
The full results are here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qy8sup55soi0kj2/Lockdown%20Champs%20FINAL%20TABLE.pdf?dl=0
And finally…
Since April when we launched the race, 218 of us have taken part in the weekly 5k – that was one participant for almost every six club members. The race started as something just to keep everyone running during “lockdown”, but it soon became a habit for many of us. We are grateful to everyone who participated in this hugely popular race, whether in just one, or all 18 weeks, or any number of weeks in between. Because of your participation, we have injected so much positivity into the Serpie community during the Covid crisis. My sincere thanks to everyone for doing something great together – on our own.
As organisers it has been fun seeing where and how everyone ran week in, week out. Together in this competition we had 1494 entries, which totalled 7470km of running. That is the approximate distance from Central London to Mongolia. So much for the ‘Lockdown’ and restricted movement due to Covid-19!
I can confirm that 22 of us entered the race every single week from start to finish. That includes me! I have felt motivated by all of you, and no doubt you’d feel the same. So well done to all of you for running EIGHTEEN 5ks in as many weeks – Alex Malzer, Alexander Kolb, Andrew Reeves, Anne Bennett, Caroline Torry, Charlotte Frith, Frank Womelsdorf, Georgina McFadyen, Grace Sim, Hilary Walker, Hugh Torry, Keith Evans, Martin Carmack, Natalia Delfino, Neil Bradshaw, Richard Taylor, Sarah Knox, Sophia Holder, Sophie Taylor, Stephanie Vaatz, and Valerie Metcalf.
And of course, I must thank my co-organisers of the Virtual 5k – Sarah Maisey, Nic Barberis and Pete Mackintosh – for their help in the past four months. Sarah pushed for the race to start within the club and helped set up the Zoom virtual café, as well as stepped into race admin when needed. Nic helped set up the race format; he also organised and managed the results verification. Pete devised the overall scoring system and managed the points as well as helped with promotion. Thanks to all three of you – it was such a great team effort to make this race happen!
One final thing. We have only finished a series – we are not done with Virtual 5k races! There will be a new series starting in the autumn, with the format to be revealed soon. A couple of us are stepping down from organising, but we welcome those who can spare some time to help – would that be you? Please get in touch if you’re interested.
Happy running,
Hans Ho
Participation Representative (participation@serpentine.org.uk)
PS. Just so that you don’t miss virtual racing for the rest of August, we have the Virtual 10k Grand Prix Club Champs from now until 30th August. Please enter via this link: https://www.serpentine.org.uk/rdb/showrace.php?race=13506
Submitted: 19 August 2020