I’m still not sure how it happened… Neil stepped down as my OMM partner so I asked Roderick. Roderick said he wasn’t as fast as Neil so we wouldn’t do as well on the B. So how about we do the A instead? (He had some excuse about qualifying races for the Tour of Mont Blanc.) I said ‘yes’. It was on this basis that we found ourselves racing to the start on Dartmoor near Okehampton last Saturday. Sadly we were eight minutes late having been held up, firstly by the buses going to the far start, and then by the queues for the toilets!
Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category
Original Mountain (and Road) Marathon
Saturday, November 6th, 2010Guessing game
Sunday, October 24th, 2010I finally made it out running on a Tuesday night for the first time this month. Sadly, I drove to last month’s venue (Rufus Stone) and by the time I made it to Fritham everyone had departed. Fortunately, they’re a predictable bunch and, having successfully guessed the route they’d choose, after about 10 minutes of running I finally caught them up. As the sunny afternoon turned in to a wet evening I was glad not to be running out in the dark on my own.
Cup Final
Sunday, October 24th, 2010Last weekend was the final of the CompassSport Cup up in the Peak District. We’d spent the night before with one of Christine’s cousins giving us the chance to meet the latest arrival in their family. Christine was off first and I was going to take Emma and Duncan around the white course but was told that I couldn’t go out on the area before my run. With no string course either we just wandered around the sunny but cold assembly area aimlessly until a long overdue Christine finally reappeared.
Muddy Marathon
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010It was the Clarendon Way Marathon today which runs from Salisbury to Winchester. The weather forecast was pretty dire with heavy rain and strong gusty winds predicted. In the end, there was just a persistent drizzle for most of the duration and you only really felt the wind on some of the more exposed stretches. More of a problem was what the rain had done to the ground: turning the exposed chalk in to a skid pad, creating a mud bath of much of the off-road sections and, in places just leaving wall-to-wall water.
Getting dark
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010It was our last run from Rufus Stone tonight and the last for which we’ll start at 6:30. Despite a prompt start, the fine drizzle meant that it was soon pretty gloomy. We did, however, manage to find Bramble Hill Hotel on the first attempt. Back to Fritham next week and an earlier start.
Four wheels better than two
Sunday, September 26th, 2010More of an issue was the sibling rivalry going on in the back. At one point Duncan was banging Emma over the head with a spade (of the bucket and spade variety I hasten to add! Today Emma insisted that I took her to the supermarket in the trailer (and that Duncan didn’t come.) In the end it was just as well that Duncan wasn’t there as we got a bit carried away with the shopping. Thankfully there aren’t too many hills on the way home!
All things considered, I think it was a good move. The trailer makes less difference to cycling than having a seat on the back and I’m sure Duncan will appreciate it for his ride to nursery when the weather takes a turn for the worse. Most importantly, it means one of us can take both the kids out (providing they learn to get on a bit better!).
Pond numbering
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010Unlike last week, it was a lovely evening for a run on Tuesday. As usual I stayed out of the discussion about where we would go but it seemed like Neil and Peter had come to some agreement as to where we would run from Rufus Stone. That didn’t stop us ending up doing two different runs! It all seemed to be down to what you consider to be the forward direction for the Six Ponds run from Fritham. Both Neil and Peter were heading for pond number two but Peter was numbering clockwise (Longcross Pond) and Neil was numbering anti-clockwise (Cadman’s Pool). You can work out from the track below who I was following!
Highland Hash
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010Now that Sunday’s courses are up on RouteGadget, the true horror of my run is available for all to see. My first problem was that I was still in “standing in a sunny field collecting car parking money” mode when I started (it had been a last minute reprieve which meant I was rushing to get out so that Christine could have a run afterwards). Three was where things started to go wrong as I just failed to pay attention to the direction I left two in and then tried desperately to make the ground fit the map around where I wanted to be.
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