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Fleming Mudbath

Monday, January 5th, 2015

Christine @ Hants XC Champs 2015Opening the curtains on the first Saturday of the year to view a very wet garden and more rain on its way could only mean one thing: the Hampshire Cross-Country Champs! At least it was handy with Fleming Park once again being the venue. Christine braved the weather first, cycling there whilst I fed the children lunch. We then followed on in the car arriving just in time to watch her race start.

The courses are particularly convoluted which has the benefit that, as spectators, we didn’t have to move very far to see Christine, and the conditions, getting progressively muddier and muddier. The children were very good given the weather. Emma said it was great fun although, to be fair, I think this may have just been her new discovery of sarcasm. Christine finished just in time for me to hand over, strip off, and head to the start for the men’s race.

Last time I ran this course two years ago, I started far too fast on the first lap only to realise that I still had to go round twice more. Knowing this still didn’t stop me repeating the error! I’ve strategically chosen a picture of Christine to accompany this post as, once you’ve removed the blurred and out of focuse photos she took, your just left with ones of me looking like an old man in lots of pain. I waded round the 11.5km of mud in 46:23, some 35 seconds slower than in 2013 and ended up four places further down in 45th place. By way of consolation, when I really am an old man next year and qualify as a veteran, I just need to shave off 16 seconds to end up in to top 5 M40s!

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Hampton Ridge and Hursley

Saturday, July 19th, 2014

Last night the orienteering club had a BBQ over at Hugh Risebrow’s beautifully situated place on the edge of the Hampton Ridge map. There was a 60 minute score event which had the added complication that the Forestry Commission permit required that we stay on the paths. I managed to visit all the controls in 56 mins but took the FC ruling to apply to all paths on the ground, not necessarily just those on the map! In addition to the BBQ, I also managed a game of croquet.

Christine at HursleyToday it was the last Summer Series event. As it was on home turf at Hursley, I’d been helping with permissions, map corrections, and the first time planner. It was a damp start to the day as we hung controls and there was a minor panic when I realised I was 5 stakes and a kite short. Thankfully the stakes were liberated from road signs and the start managed without a kite. I did then proceed to hang one of the yellow controls in the wrong place as I wasn’t looking at the map!

By first start everything was in place though and the sun also saw fit to shine. I had a quick run (strictly non-competitive this time) before heading back to pick up the rest of the family. Christine secured her second place in the Summer Series handicap whilst I took the children round the yellow course for their first win of the season. They then enjoyed thrashing the nettles with big sticks with the other youngsters!

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Coast Path Finale

Saturday, June 28th, 2014

Mass Beach RunHaving managed to get a reasonably sized SOC team together for this year’s Dorset Coast Path Relay it was perhaps inevitable that none of the other clubs would! As a consequence, it was decided that we would all join forces for a final record attempt before calling it a day.

SOC was allocated the section from Hardy’s Monument to Osmington. At ~15km I couldn’t really justify dragging 18 people down to Dorset even for a record attempt and we were eventually a (sub-)team of 10. I was off first and had a somewhat flustered start as it was shortly after being told that I had about 20 minutes to wait! I still haven’t completely thrown the cough that’s been plaguing me for the last month and my breathing was somewhat laboured. As I handed over to Andrew Nash it was clear that I wasn’t in any state to run the King of the Coast section later with Tim and Tamsin.

Christine and I were meant to help with a couple of hill sections but we managed to miss both of them. We therefore headed off to Studland for the children to enjoy the beach. Sadly when the incoming runner finally reached the group waiting for the mass run along the beach we were already well over the previous record time. Christine ran with them and then jogged back before we all headed to the pub.

Thankfully, of the promised sunshine and heavy showers, the latter part didn’t show its face until we were driving home. It’s sad to think of this as the last Coast Path Relay – maybe its time will come again…

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Synchronised training

Friday, May 2nd, 2014

For the past couple of years, uploading my running training has been a bit of a faff. I like to use a desktop app (SportTracks) so that, whatever the changing fads online, I still have all of my data in one place. (It goes back to 2006 when I first got my Forerunner 305. Some day I may even important my old Polar Training Software data.) The desktop app also has some interesting plugins. One of these I used to push my training to dailymile for comparison with a few friends and colleagues and for the widget on this site. However, I’m also partial to a bit of segment stealing on Strava. Sadly no simple SportTracks plugin for Strava so that was a separate upload.

After a bit of search and experimentation, my new workflow is to upload to the SportTracks website which then syncs seamlessly (in both directions) to the desktop app. Then I’m using the excellent online tool Tapiriik to automatically synchronise the data from SportTracks to Strava.

On the plus side, this means I’m now only downloading once and it doesn’t have to be on the machine with SportTracks installed. Also, without really thinking about it, it means I know have 8 years worth of data synced back to Strava!

On the negative side, Tapiriik doesn’t support dailymile so that will have to go by the wayside, at least for now. That means you’ll see a slightly squished Strava widget in the sidebar of this site. The other major downside is cost. The SportTracks site has an annual subscription of $35. Whilst the site is nice and they are continually adding good features, if it weren’t for the sync with the desktop app I wouldn’t be forking out that money. We’ll see how things are going come renewal time. Automatic sync on Tapiriik also comes at a cost but a mere $2 pa for what is a very slick site and available as open source if you really wanted to host it yourself.

Now I just need to decide whether to add Garmin Uploader to my shopping list so that I don’t even need to turn on the Mac! (Works with my Nexus 7 but not my S2 unfortunately.)

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Brecons JK

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014

Emma CyclingThe second week of the Easter holidays we were booked in to a lovely cottage (once we found it!) called Heartsease near Brecon. We’d brought our bikes but I’d managed to forget the Trailgator for towing Duncan. Rather than cycling up to the waterfalls above Talybont as planned, we drove up, went for a walk, and then Christine and Emma cycled down to the dam where Duncan and I met them again (Duncan having practiced his cycling back and forth on the dam.)

Pen Y FanThe next day we repeated the walk we did two years ago up Pen y Fan. The main difference this time was that Duncan had to use his own leg power to get up to the summit! Both children were very good and it was only towards the very end of the walk that they both started to grumble a bit as they got tired.

On the third day of the holiday we were joined by Christine’s parents (in the nearby Pencelli Castle campsite) and they took the children to Dan-yr-Ogof caves leaving Christine and I to do another ascent of Pen y Fan, this time walking from near our cottage and taking in Fan y Big and Cribyn as well. The following day we all headed over to Cardiff and had a lovely time with Christine’s brother and family.

Then the serious business started – the JK. The Friday was a sprint race around Swansea University. I had a reasonable run finishing 8th on M35 in what was not a particularly tricky area whilst Christine picked up a Silver medal on her course. After a quick trip to the fun fair we then rushed back to the cottage to cook a big dinner with Christine’s cousin and family having arrived to stay in the cottage next door.

Saturday’s event was on Merthyr Common. It’s not my sort of area as I can neither run nor navigate fast in that terrain. I was therefore pleased with a 6th place in what would have looked like a respectable time if Duncan Archer hadn’t come and beaten the rest of the field by 10 minutes! On Sunday we returned to the same assembly area but the weather which, until this point had been very kind to us, had turned. I not only carried the mandatory cagoule but wore it all the way round my course! I finished 7th in a similar time to the previous day which brought me up to 5th over the two days. Christine failed to make it three second places in a row and dropped down to 4th.

We had to move out of our cottage by this point and went to stay with Christine’s parents in Monmouth. This meant we could leave the children there on the Monday whilst Christine and I went to the (sunny once more) relays at Pwll Du. I ran the last leg in the JK Trophy bringing the SOC team home in a respectable 17th place. Christine managed another 2nd (on first leg in W120+) although her team ended up 5th. Now we just needed a holiday to recover!

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Run some Pubs

Sunday, December 15th, 2013

Today was the traditional ‘Run the Pubs’ where we run round the pubs that we’ve visited on Tuesday evening runs during the summer. There were six of us this year and, in keeping with last year’s tradition, we decided to bin one of the pubs (the Drift at Beaulieu Road Station) for a shorter run (13 miles) starting at the Redshoot Inn and ending with some great food at The Oak at Bank (where Andy somehow managed to book a table with less than a week’s notice). The weather deteriorated on our way round but no-one seemed to mind. We even got cheered along by a selection of Santas at one point when we accidentally came across the route of the CC6 cross-country race (over-taking the back marker in the process!). We also bumped in to Tuesday night veteran Mike Yeo at the New Forest Inn who, clad in wellies, declined to join us for the final short leg to Bank.

2013 Run the Pubs

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Buskett’s Lawn

Sunday, December 15th, 2013

Buskett's LawnChristine was out in Washington at a conference last weekend but that didn’t stop us going orienteering – we recruited her cousin Jayne to act as split-start stand in! She ran first and I took the children round the white course which, given the walk to the start, was about the right length for them (although it would be good to get Emma out on a course without Duncan at some point). They seemed to enjoyed wading along the muddy rides.

I’d failed to guess the start times correctly so was a mere 20 minutes late for the last start time but still wasn’t quite the last to start. I’ve had a cough/cold for the last week or more so wasn’t expecting great things and, in the results, I’m a good 10 minutes off the pace, not helped by almost missing out one control. It was a lovely day to be out running and my thanks go to Jayne for making it possible.

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Gosport Half

Sunday, November 17th, 2013

Today was the day of what I believe was my first road half-marathon. I was taking it fairly seriously having picked a (hopefully) fast course at Gosport and had been following a Runner’s World training plan for the past couple of months. The final few hours of preparation weren’t ideal though: Emma had been up in the night and was then sick in car on the way to the event (as she was for my last half marathon!). My warm-up consisted of standing in the queue for the toilets, buying some gels to replace those I’d left at home, and then standing in the baggage queue before fighting my way to somewhere near the front at the start.

Going in to the race, my best guess was for a time somewhere in the range 80-85 minutes. I decided to hedge my bets and start out a pace for the first few miles that would bring me back in 82 minutes and take it from there. That pace felt pretty comfortable and it wasn’t long before I was dreaming about beating my PB of 79:06 from the Forest of Dean Trails Half-Marathon some 8 years ago.

Although I put in some good miles, I was struggling to push hard enough to maintain that pace and in the last couple of miles I was finding it pretty tough. My attempt to cross the line ahead of what turned out to be the third placed woman (!) had me bringing back up the last of the gels before picking up my medal.

All in all, I can’t not be pleased though. My chip time was 79:34 which was absolutely at the right end of my range of predicted times (indeed, much of my speed work had been done assuming a time much closer to 85). I’m currently showing as 49th which would also be great but there are a few people I know were there missing from the results. The main detraction from the day? It took us nearly an hour to crawl through the traffic just to get back to the far end of the course!

20131117-gosport-half

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