Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

Dibden Street-O

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Always a glutton for punishment, I followed up my lunchtime orienteering yesterday with the SOC street event in the evening. This time it was down in Dibden courtesy of Jon Forster. Jon’s innovation (as a maths professor) was that the difference between each lamppost number and the control number on the map was always a multiple of five. This meant you knew when you were in the right (or even the wrong) place.

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Lunchtime run

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

I’m on a course at work this week but stole out yesterday lunchtime to go to the BAOC event up at Farley Mount. I took 52 minutes for the 8.6km A course. Only one big mistake: at number twelve where I lost sight of the control coming off the path and headed towards the edge of the unmapped open assuming it was where the fence lay. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case and there wasn’t much left of the fence other than the odd post to guide me back to the control.

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Return to Hawley and Hornley

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

Today we returned to the scene of last year’s British Night Champs (Hawley and Hornley) for the BKO Concorde Chase. I had a bit of a head cold so wasn’t running at 100% speed which is a shame as the area is generally very runnable. I suspect it was affecting my concentration as well: at number six I started heading north-west as if going from seven to eight. The paths fitted (sort of) and I wasted some time running around the unmapped thickets until I realised what I’d done.

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Cross-Country spectating

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

250We took Christine’s Mum along to the CC6 race at Ampfield Woods this morning. This league is the winter equivalent of the RR10 series but sadly it has a restriction on who can run. Men with times under six minute miles and women under six thirty aren’t permitted to compete which rules out Christine and myself. This is a pity as the races are in much nicer locations than the larger Hants League events. Still, it meant I had a chance to take a few photos before helping on the finish.

Privacy over price

Monday, January 15th, 2007

To complete my new set of shoes I was looking to buy a pair of Adidas Swoop II fell shoes. The cheapest I could find them online by a long margin was at “the official UK adidas shop“. Unfortunately, reading the smallprint, they appear to be part of Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited whom I would have had to write to (yes, with pen and paper) in order not to receive mailings and telephone calls. In the end I paid the extra £10 to get them elsewhere.

Beginners Guide to Orienteering

Monday, January 15th, 2007

For those who wonder what this strange sport that I partake in at weekends is (or indeed those that think it’s something Scouts do with twigs), British Squad member Oli Johnson has written a nice introduction on the planetFear site.

Blue skies at Waggoners Wells

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

We had a full car for the drive over to the Guildford Orienteers regional event at Waggoners Wells today. We arrived in plenty of time and I treated myself to a new pair of O-shoes (VJ Integrator spikes again although bizarrely a size up from my last pair). You could start at anytime within your allocated start block which is fine on M21L but I wouldn’t like to have had to wait in the queues for one of the more popular courses, even on such a bright sunny day.

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Tired legs

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

245After a morning coaching the South Central Juniors at Star Posts, Bracknell, we nipped over to Prospect Park in Reading for the Hants Cross-Country League race. My legs were pretty dead from the off and that was on the flat – I made no headway when it came to the hilly section. Unlike last weekend, I wasn’t able to pick up the pace at all on the second lap of the 8.4km course. I eventually finished in just over 35:30, four places down on where I was in the championship race! It wasn’t a wasted journey though as I was needed to count for Southampton. Unfortunately we then made the mistake of trying to exit Reading via the Oracle shopping centre and the Madejski Stadium (just after the Royals match with Everton would have ended) so the journey home was also slow!