Where have all the sprint races gone?
Howth, 2010
In England the ultra-short races, like Grasmere and Burnsall, have long formed their own hallowed tradition and the British Championship has likewise been constructed with all-rounders in mind:…
…the 2010 incarnation, for instance, consists of two medium length races, one short and one long.
The professional guides’ races in England, today largely running under the auspices of the British Open Fell Runners Association (BOFRA), gave birth to the fast and furious short races (often less than 2 miles total distance) with winning times well under the quarter of the hour.
Ireland’s mountain running heritage comes from much younger roots, but despite this, a tradition for very short and very fast races arose. This tradition has come under threat in recent years and its flame flickers weakly to steal a word from one of the now defunct courses: the Hellfire Flicker.
This can prove a great loss to the sport in the long-term. One proponent of keeping shorter and faster races has long been IMRA High Performance Officer Gerry Brady who believes that it’s particularly important for junior and young senior runners to learn how to run fast and under pressure in the hills rather than just _“a hard start until the race quickly settles down then daydream but hold your position. _
Many hill runners have entered the sport from routes other than mainstream athletics and they have not learned to race, how to make use of the other runners, how to hang on though rough patches, and how to slip away from a chasing group just before the others feel ready to start their run for home.”
Speaking after the relatively short Fairy Chase (indeed it speaks volumes of current affairs when a 6k race can be referred to as “short”), Gerry Brady commented “how longer races often degenerate into almost solo runs without much passing or being passed and little of the intensity of a cross-country race like the English championships on Parliament Fields. This is particularly the case up front where the runners are sharp enough to prise open comfortable gaps in the first half of the race. This is poor preparation for the international championships where 100 metres faster could be 10 places and slower could cost you 10 places.
More races in the 20 to 30 minutes range would allow all runners throughout the field to strive towards keeping a high tempo from start to finish and leave the dreaming for the pillow that night! Of course short races won’t get you up to the big peaks but they can be a different kind of fun, and good preparation for the longer races.”
Most mountain runners can undoubtedly nod their heads in recognition at the notion of “hiding” on a long uphill in a longer race. You slow down to a walk, get some of your breath back before the terrain flattens or the descent starts.
The Perfect Distance
As I read The Perfect Distance, the soon to be dramatised book on the great rivalry between Seb Coe and Steve Ovett on the 800m, 1500m and 1 mile distance, I could not help but reflect on how far down the shorter distances have fallen in terms of public recognition.
We live in times of marathon-mania, where many runners, who would be better off learning the trade and experiencing truly fast running in 5k and 10k races, rush into the marathon.
Once nations were captivated by thoughts of the 4-minute mile and many runners had their first experience in fiercely contested short cross-country races rather than pedestrian road races.
Don’t get me wrong, I am as captivated by the long-distance exploits of Joss Naylor as the neck-breaking pace of Kenny Stuart’s Grasmere record, but you need balance in running to create balanced runners, and I wonder has the pendulum currently swung too strongly towards longer distances to be optimal for the long-term development of the sport in the West.
An Irish Example
In Ireland a combination of increasing numbers and a preference for longer races has led to the near-extinction of a number of classical courses. Without resorting to statistical overload, one need only look at the Leinster League 2005: in it, eight out of thirteen races were six kilometres or shorter in distance.
Fast-forward to (an otherwise excellent) Leinster League 2010 this number has been reduced to four. In 2005 the shortest race measured a mere three kilometres while in 2010 the shortest race measured five kilometres.
The Winter League could serve as the cauldron for an experiment in shorter races. However, in later years it’s turned into a preparatory league for the Leinster League with increasingly longer courses. In terms of runner development, shorter courses would be much more appropriate at such an early stage of the season.
Of course, the question beckons: what is the purpose of the league, fun running or development races? Is it time to introduce more hill runs for the elite and sub-elite as opposed to those run for the masses or would this further dilute competitiveness of the races overall? Certainly a strong argument could be made that strong road and cross-country runners would be more likely to attend shorter hill races particularly in the off-season.
Corrig
The Lost Courses
If a short-distance league were to be reintroduced in Ireland either as part of another league or a stand-alone league at an opportune time of the year, many of the old courses could be brought back. Some of the longer ‘sprint races’ such as Corrig, Scalp and the Sugarloaf BBQ have remained in circulation recently, but the truly fast races have fallen by the wayside, let’s examine them briefly.
With winning times down around 15-16 minutes the Hellfire Flicker may well be IMRA’s fastest course and Hellfire Woods remains a commonly used location for the longer races taking place there now.
Likewise the four kilometre Sugarloaf Rush has given way to the longer Sugarbowl in recent years but would remain a classic if returned to active duty. Not only do you have to climb more than 200m in less than four kilometres you must contend with the extremely challenging rocky descent: a virtual “scree-sprint”.
Then there’s the Three-Rock Dash, the straightforward ascent of the ubiquitous Fairy Castle creates a race of less than five kilometres, allowing for super-fast descending of the traditional Boneshaker.
During this same period some routes that still feature regularly today had shorter versions. Howth sported a one-lap course just over four kilometres for the Winter League and only lengthened to the full eight-and-a-half kilometre version in the summer.
Great Sugarloaf, Wicklow
A Proposal
It seems right to suggest a way by which shorter routes could return without infringing unnecessarily on the current, and popular, Leinster League format. Option 1 would be to replace the current Winter or Trail League with a “sprint series” (which could retain the name of either and feature additional races: for instance, three of the old short courses combined with shorter contemporary ones).
A secondary, but more resource-consuming, option would be too hold a three race sprint series in early Spring as a bridge between the Winter League and the Leinster League. The drain on volunteers could be heavy, however, and remains an important concern for the IMRA Committee.
Perhaps the simplest option would be to make it policy to have at least two of the old “sprint distance” races (the rushes, dashes, and flickers of this world) or similar modern inventions as part of the Leinster League.
The challenge then would be how to facilitate current numbers nearing 300. Clever route design would be one option, choosing wide open mountains for the “experiment” could be another. Some of the Dublin Mountains, with their restored trails, such as Tibradden and Cruagh, could host suitable courses and so could Maulin. Other possibilities undoubtedly exist and IMRA has no shortage of ingenious course mappers to find them.
Finally, due to the low finishing times on short courses, the men and women’s races could be started separately and the results amalgamated afterwards without undue strain on volunteers.
This could prove unpopular but rather than being seen as a sexist gesture, I would suggest that the opportunity for the female mountain runners to race each other directly without being boxed in by groups of the more numerous male contestants would improve the competitiveness within the female category. After all, the ladies race separately in cross-country to great effect.
Bring back the shorter races? Let the debate begin…
