Brampton To Carlisle Race. The Glory years (2002 - 2004)

2002. 18th position in 55mins 05 secs
The 2002 race was another 10 mile pb -thats 5 in a row. Only a little faster than in 2001 but a small nibble off a pb is the best way to do it - leaves you thinking you can take another small nibble off again in the future. Writing this in 2013 I can't recollect anything in particular about the race day itself but I do know that 2002 was the year I really began to make inroads with my running, when I started to get plenty of third and second places in races. And, as Plucky said one day when he saw me outsprinted by a 17yr old... "blimey! if that lad hadn't entered this race YOU would have won!!" Winning races wasn't something I had any experience of. I think I might have been about 8th in a cycle road race in 1996.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the 2002 event was THREE lads running inside 50 minutes.
2002 result CLICK

2003. 14th position in 55mins 46 secs
It had to happen. Nobody can continue getting faster every year, as I had done for the previous 5. The annoying thing was I SHOULD really have done. I was fitter than ever and on target to run a 54 minute Brampton. This is based  on my 56:39 result in the  hilly Derwentwater 10 which always falls 2 weeks prior to Brampton. The DW10 can be reliably considered to be 2 minutes slower than Brampton, so a 54 something seemed reasonable to me - it was 2 mins quicker and would also be a shaving off my pb. But disaster struck. After the DW10 I got a bout of sickness. V & D.  It had all cleared up by the time Brampton came round, but I hadn't trained, had hardly ran really, and had been severely depleted of fluids, bodyweight, and morale during the bad spell.
Although a long 55 was disappointing to me at the time, it was still a 55. Still 5:34 per mile pace. Well up the finishing order.

Notably, and certainly worth more of a mention than in the footnote, Mike Pluckrose ran 57:03!

Plucky had listened to me banging on about minutes per mile pace for several years. He'd seen the success I was enjoying, and had also taken up running a year or two earlier. I had paced him to beat the hour on  a lumpy course based out of Abbeytown and now here he was following in my footsteps, literally!

A few weeks after the 2003 B2C I decided that perhaps I would run a marathon the following year. Scotty had been doing them for a few years and would be training specifically for a marathon. And as we trained together I may as well too. I thought I'd enter one quite close to the London Marathon, but couldn't actually do London, because this was now November and its full by the summer.

Then at Christmas I found out that Border Harriers get given club numbers for their athletes to run London. They had three and only two people wanted one so I got the third....

BLOODY HELL!
I was going to run a marathon!!
In London!!!
The London Marathon!!!!
BLOODY HELL!!!!!

I could easily become side-tracked and spout on ad infinitum about the highs and lows of my 9 years of marathon running. But that would be to digress from this Brampton to Carlisle blog. Suffice to say  that the London Marathon (or more specifically the training I completed in preparation for it) defined the whole of the following year and certainly helped me achieve what I believe  was my ultimate potential, in 2004.

2003 result CLICK

2004. 9th position in 53mins  07secs
Theres a lot to write about the 2004 race - pull up a chair....

53.07
53.07
53.07!

Unlike some of the previous (now 15) years of running Brampton to Carlisle 10 mile race, I can remember quite a lot about the 2004 version. The story of 53.07 can be traced back to a winter of marathon training which then culminated in a superb (in my opinion) debut performance exceeding every expectation. After the marathon I found racing to be much harder work than before it. Legs had nothing to offer - even a month afterwards! The summer came and went, and the ideal, cooler running conditions returned and so did the big 2 autumn 10 milers.

Despite feeling off form I had still been trying to race, and certainly training hard. Even so I never imagined I was in shape to run  a short 55 minutes at Derwentwater. But I did. 55:13! I only had to knock 9 seconds off that time on the proven-to-be-2-mins-quicker Brampton course to record a new pb.

I actually ran quite poorly. I set off TOO fast and really struggled the final 2 or 3 miles. The toughest part of the B2C is the 8th mile which includes the long drag up to the the filling station,  but at 7 miles the average pace was still indicating  a sub 52 minute result was on the cards, so to lose over a minute on that pace in the final 3 miles is a sign of poor pace judgement, despite that drag to come.
If any proof were needed to support my statement that this was a poor run by me - Eddie Simpson of Preston beat me by 3 seconds in the DW10, and by about 70 seconds this day.

But hey, they only take your time at the end of the race and that was 53.07. I'm really proud to have ran that time. it was an astonishing amount of time to knock off my pb and its a pb which still stands up very well against some of the top local runners nowadays. In fact, in the B2C since 2004 my time has been beaten by Border Harriers just four times, by two men....
Mike Scott 52.22  (2005)
Mike Scott 52.28 (2006)
James Douglas 50:33 (2010)
James Douglas 51:04 (2011)

In the era of the running boom my time would not have featured anywhere, but I can't help when I was born or that I only took up running after those glory days were over. 53.07 is a very good time for 10 miles. I can't see how I could ever run as fast as that again so I'm milking it for all its worth.

2004 result CLICK