Date: Saturday 2nd / Sunday 3rd September 2017

The organisers of the British Masters Decathlon and Heptathlon championship saw an opportunity. Why book Woodbourn Road track for the Decathlon and Heptathlon but have it empty for large parts of the weekend between events. So they decided to also host the inaugural North of England Masters event over the same two days. They’d got all the judges etc so it made sense.

Unfortunately, the build up wasn’t all plain sailing. Firstly the event was poorly advertising in my opinion. No social media presence. No twitter, no Facebook group or event etc. There had been a few emails sent directly at clubs, ie to secretaries, but you’re relying on that info being forwarded on, which is not always the case. I personally tried really hard to get fellow Striders there. I published a club email with all the details and made various posts within our Facebook group in an attempt to cajole people. The event was on our doorstep, so I really hoped we could get more people down there.

Sadly, whilst people may have been interested in taking part, grumble number two raised it head. A shocking entry mechanism.

You entered via the British Masters Opentrack system. Now this worked perfectly if you were already affiliated with your local Masters organisation (The Northern Masters in our case). Becoming affiliated entails you joining as a second claim member each year for a small fee, which I do. Then being a member you just clicked the events you wanted to enter, paid your fee electronically and that was it.

But if you weren’t already a ‘masters’ affiliate then you had to go to the trouble of sending off scans of your passport / driving license to prove who you were and presumably to validate your age. A know of a number of Striders who just gave up when faced with this. I wonder how many other people around the north did the same?

You can enter almost any 5k, 10k, HM or Marathon in the country with just your name and at a push your England Athletics membership number. Why put these ridiculous extra steps in place?

There is a massive problem at the moment trying to get people to try track and field and putting ludicrous entry barriers in the way does help one little bit. As for the lack of advertising, its criminal in this day and age not use social media properly. Use it right and you can hit thousands of people almost instantly.

Ah well, grumble over, onto the competition.

Thankfully the organisation of competition itself was way smoother.  Tons of official, wind test machines, full electronic timing. At previous meets its been people with stopwatches doing the timing.

Bright sunshine greeted competitors on the Saturday morning.

After making my long jump debut at Manchester back in June I decided to give it another go here. I also had the 100m on Saturday afternoon, with the 200m coming on Sunday afternoon.

The only other Striders representation over the weekend was from Doug Banks who had the 400m on the Saturday and 800m on the Sunday.

Saturday – Long Jump

You were allowed 6 jumps in the long jump. Sadly, entry numbers were low and I only ended up competing against 6 other men. Despite the decathlon taking part at the same time they decided to keep standalone events away from the decathlon. Probably wise to avoid confusion.

I’d jumped 4.95 back in June and i’d hoped to go quite a bit further. In the end, I only added 5cm onto my PB and get upto 5.00m, but i’d hoped for more. Long Jump is very technical and I don’t have any expertise. I just run very quickly using brute pace to the board and then leap with no finesse. If i’m going to progress at that event I think I need some help with every aspect.  I wonder if Toni Minichello has a gap in is diary now Jess Ennis has retired?

As there were no other V45 in the competition I won the gold medal by default. It would have been nice to have some competition, but happy with a win and that my 5.00m jump is currently the 24th best V45 in the country this year.  I find this stat baffling in only my second ever set of jumps.