Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category
Racing at work
Monday, November 21st, 2011Classic Mistake
Sunday, November 20th, 2011A belated post to offer my excuses for appearing at the bottom of the results for the Brown course at this year’s November Classic. Having done our helping in advance of the day it meant we didn’t have quite the same rush on the day. I took the children round the string course which was conveniently located adjacent to the parking and assembly area. When the chill wind dropped and the sun came out it was actually quite pleasant. Christine then took over the child minding and I jogged off to the start.
I was pleased to find that my ankle, although still slightly swollen from the CompassSport Cup final, didn’t seem to be causing me any trouble and, not having done a huge amount of running, my legs actually felt reasonably fresh. My navigation wasn’t particularly clean though and I seemed to spend rather a lot of time about 50 metres adrift from the control site. It wasn’t a bad run though and would have put me in fourth place had it not been for the small fact that, on downloading, I appeared to be missing control number 4…
I try to use a backup card at larger events using Emit but there was apparently no mark in the appropriate place. Unfortunately, the use of a backup card was probably my downfall. Without one, I’m pretty good at checking the display on my card to ensure I have punched but I tend not to when I do have a backup card. As is often the case with Emit though, on this occasion there were several controls where I found it impossible to get my wrist oriented to get the card down flat. It would seem that control 4 was one of these and, although my GPS shows that I did at least visit the control (I found I couldn’t actually remember!), I stand disqualified.
Half Term-O
Thursday, October 27th, 2011Ankle injury at Longshaw
Thursday, October 20th, 2011I didn’t have a bad run after that with just a couple of minor wobbles on 11 and 22. I was, however, simply just too slow ending up down in 47th place albeit out of a large field of 129. I’d like to think that maybe without the ankle injury I could have completed the course 3 or 4 minutes faster and may have just scraped in to the top 30. It was a tough field though. I was just glad not to be the one doing the driving as, once the adrenalin left my system, the ankle was pretty sore. Today, the swelling has started to subside and the ankle seems to be pretty flexible so I’m hoping for a quick recovery.
Farley XC
Sunday, October 9th, 2011The cross-country season started this weekend. Christine cried off with a cold so I made the short trip to Farley Mount on my own. The course had changed this year with a shorter loop meaning 4 laps (and hence 4 chances to head up the hill) to make up a course just under 10k. My legs felt sluggish warming up so I started slowly. After the first lap I was somewhere around 60th and hoped to work my up through the field. Unfortunately, the field had different ideas and despite swapping places numerous times I eventually finished… 61st. Nothing like a Hants XC race to put you in your place. Still, there have been races in the past where I’ve barely been in the top 100 so it could have been worse!
Fun running
Sunday, September 25th, 2011The most nervous competitor in our house this morning was not, however, me. Emma was entered in the 750 fun run (year 2 and under) and seemed a little bit anxious. It was all very well done though with the same musical warm-up routine that the adults were treated to. Christine ran round with Emma (well, I don’t think they ran all the way). Emma looked very serious as she sprinted towards the finish line (Duncan was slightly distracted by the air ambulance taking off at this point) but was full of smiles when she received her medal. She even asked when the next one was!
Veteran Relay
Saturday, September 10th, 2011Having failed to put together an SOC team for today’s Test Way Relay, it was nice to get a call asking me to run for Southampton AC. It did, however, turn out to be in the vets team! After a trip to the supermarket I left in rather a hurry to make it to Wherwell for the allotted time. As it turned out, I arrived in plenty of time but that did mean I was in place in time to shelter when the rain came through. When a Southampton vest appeared on the horizon in first place I was all set to go however, another Southampton runner appeared from nowhere to take the handover for this, the A team. I didn’t have to wait long for my man though and he had an Eastleigh runner just in front so there would be a race to be had.
The next Eastleigh runner sped off but, to be honest, didn’t look like he was going to keep it up. I overtook him as we entered West Down which was a mistake as I didn’t know which was the right path and ended up climbing further than necessary (it’s a few years since I last ran this leg). When we dropped back to the old railway line I didn’t look back. The distance to Stockbridge appeared to be longer than I had measured in the car on the way there but that probably meant I kept up the pace better than I might have done otherwise. There were plenty of womens and mixed teams to pick off on the way and I also managed to overtake our A team runner (who looked distinctly more veteran than me!).
I enjoyed the run which probably means I should have been faster although the jog back to Chilbolton Common to retrieve the car seemed like particularly work! The A team apparently finished in second place, just 15 seconds down on Overton, with the vets team in 4th place behind Stubbington Green. A respectable position for a bunch of old men!
Dorset Coast
Saturday, September 3rd, 2011We had a great day at the beach in Charmouth on the Friday and met up with Christine’s brother and family that evening for dinner. (It was our anniversary and, after 11 years, I couldn’t wear my wedding ring as it has developed a split!)
In keeping with the tent’s previous outings this year – it was wet on the morning of our last night. However, by the time I’d been to Lyme Regis to do my short leg at the start of the relay and returned, the wind had done a reasonably job of drying it out. Having got everything back in the car we headed over to Abbotsbury where we were running the legs either side of the hill fort. We then weren’t on again until after Lulworth but sadly spent most of that time in traffic around Dorchester for the Dorset County Show. We had lunch on a windswept Povington Hill, watching the dark clouds form over the hills adjacent to the sea.
Christine ran the section from Flower’s Barrow to Kimmeridge. A hill team then brought the baton up to meet at Clavell Tower and I set off for Chapman’s Pool. With the restart at Lulworth there was, for a change, other runners around. I was fairly confident that I should be able to stay ahead of Jack Benham but as we approached Chapman’s Pool and I passed the fourth changeover for the Junior Squad team, I wasn’t sure I’d manage to hold them at bay for much longer. Thankfully the hill team weren’t quite as late as arriving as they had apparently been at some earlier handovers and I wasn’t forced to climb all the way back out of Chapman’s Pool.
We then set of for Studland where the children had a chance to play on the beach. The other members of the SOC team slowly assembled (three are required to run the beach leg to Sandbanks together) and we were greeted to the sight of Paul Whipple splashing through the water round the headland just as the Kerno team came down the hill. The blue and yellow tops therefore inter-mingled as we set off along the shoreline (where thankfully the sea was leaving some relatively firm wet sand) in the race to be third team across the line. I reached the ferry terminus ahead of the first Kerno runner but who were those next two runners? It turned out that Iain McNally (who hadn’t been there when I started) had arrived late but had caught us up which thankfully meant we had three runners home before the next Kerno runner appeared.
In the final reckoning we were fourth over the complete course and second in the handicap with a new fastest time for SOC of 8 hours 34 minutes. In addition Iain was crowned King of the Coast. And most importantly (given that I had told Christine to leave the waterproofs at home) the forecast rain didn’t return until the evening.
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