Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

Forest of Dean revisited

Monday, April 9th, 2007

315We’re just back from a great weekend of orienteering at the JK helped along by some fantastic weather. The weekend’s entertainment began with a sprint race around the University of West of England campus on the outskirts of Bristol. Route choice wasn’t particularly tricky with just a scattering of cut-throughs and very few dead-ends. I made only one real mistake, overshooting by one hedgerow on the way to number eight. The pace was fast and furious though and my time of 15:31 for the 2.9km course was decidedly average, particularly when the elites went out later in the day. Øystein Kvaal Østerbø was the eventual winner in just 12:11, a time I’d be hard pressed to match on the track.
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Edinburgh hills

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

312I missed yesterday’s run in the New Forest as I’ve been up in Scotland with work. I did, however, make the most of what was a lovely evening by going for a run from my central Edinburgh hotel up Arthur’s Seat. From there I was rewarded with views of a fantastic sunset over the city (any excuse to stop for a breather!). I did miss another golden opportunity though: whilst I had a hire car I should have taken the 1 mile detour to call in at the town of Currie on the outskirts of the city!

Southern Road Relays

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

I had been recruited as part of Southampton Running Club’s team for the Southern 12 Stage Road Relay. This meant an early start for the drive up to the Open University at Milton Keynes. I was down for leg 10 which then meant four hours of leisurely spectating in the sunshine before trying to gear myself up for the 5.3km course.

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Gaining my spurs

Friday, March 30th, 2007
Ankle X-ray

Towards the end of last year I went to the GP as the occasional pain that I felt on the front of my left ankle when the toes were pushed up, for example by stepping on a log, had become more persistent. I was referred to the physio whose holistic approach undoubtedly saw my back and core stability improve but did little for my ankle. Yesterday I finally made it to a foot and ankle specialist at the Wessex Nuffield hospital (yes – the IBM medical insurance is paying!) via the X-ray department. After a brief description of the symptoms he took a look at the images and immediately diagnosed anterior impingement, better known as “footballer’s ankle”.
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Summer’s on its way

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Spring has well and truly sprung and it feels like summer won’t be far behind. The change in the clocks at the weekend and some bright sunshine left me with no excuse not to cycle in to work yesterday. I don’t use those muscles very often and my legs ached after just a few miles. The sun was out again today for the first Tuesday night run of the year. As is tradition, this was from the Royal Oak, Fritham and involved visiting six of the nearby ponds. I’ve decided to post GPX files for these runs but don’t yet have a good way of displaying them. If your running Internet Explorer then you can view it on some MS Virtual Earth imagery and try and spot the ponds! You can always use GPSBabel if you want some other format.

Harewood Hail

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

It was the regional qualifying round of the CompassSport Cup today with SOC competing at Harewood Forest near Andover. The weather was utterly bizarre: as I got changed there was an absolutely freezing wind blowing, while competing it was quite warm under the blue skies, yet as I made ready to leave, it started hailing!
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Running in Romsey

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

John Horton put on this evening’s street event in Romsey on a new map courtesy of Graham Harrison. For once I hadn’t been orienteering at lunchtime although, as the sun had been shining, I hadn’t been able to resist the group run up to Farley Mount. It didn’t take long for me to decide that I wasn’t going to be able to get all 32 controls but I still didn’t pick a particular good route all the same. Only managed 24 and I was still 26 seconds late back.

Watery end

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

Having not got much exercise last week I attempted to sneak out for a run this morning. I set off south from Kidlington down the canal towards Oxford. At Dukes Lock I noted the branch off to the right for the Thames and concluded that I might be able to make a loop. I therefore continued along the canal to Port Meadow and then turned right through Wolvercote. I then turned north again up the Isis (Thames). Unfortunately, unlike canals, rivers have a nasty habit of branching and it wasn’t long before I found myself paddling across some flooded field not entirely sure where I was going. Eventually I ended up at the ring road but mistakenly turned right again, ending up back at Wolvercote. Looking at the map this evening I realise that the footpath that I had seen turn off never crosses the river and therefore my cunning route was always doomed to failure. Still, my 45 minute run ended up being twice that!