Archive for the ‘Running’ Category

Going: heavy to waterlogged

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

691It being a reasonable distance away, we’ve always avoided the Hants Cross-Country race at Goodwood however, having nothing better to do, we decided to head along on Saturday. We went to Chichester beforehand but, other than a quick sprint round the outside of the cathedral, we spent most of our time in Priory Park. Just off the main road, this is a nice place to get away from the crowds for a picnic lunch and it had a great playground for Emma. Chichester struck me as a pleasant enough Cathedral city and it looked like a good place for some good old-fashioned high street shopping.
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Back to the streets

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Tuesday night runs returning to the streets of Southampton this week and, in keeping with tradition, we started with a round trip taking in Lordshill Sainsburys. There wasn’t even much debate as to whether we should run it clockwise or or anti-clockwise (the latter won). We had a bumper turnout, breaking in to double figures for the first time in a long while. There was quite a spread in speeds – hopefully those at the front didn’t mind waiting once in a while and those at the back didn’t feel like they were being dragged along the whole time. Generally I’m happy to pootle along in the middle somewhere and take a break whenever I’m given the chance!
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Torchlit Ponds

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

As the track below shows, last night we were running the Six Ponds route once again (although this time counter-clockwise). What it fails to show is that we were doing so in the dark, the clocks having changed at the weekend. Darkness is a relative term though with some of us sporting large head torches and others the smallest of LED lights. It was a good chance to creep on some impressive stags. Back to the roads of Southampton next week…
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Staying dry

Monday, October 27th, 2008

In common with my in-laws, I was grateful not to be in the Lake District this weekend at the Original Mountain Marathon. As featured all over the BBC news, the event was a bit of a wash out (to put it mildly). In my case, I was asked to run the long score a couple of months back when someone’s partner looked like they might have to drop out. Given that they would have been looking to win, I dread to think how little kit I might have been carrying in a bid to keep up! Instead, I enjoyed a dry Saturday with my family back in Hertfordshire.

If you want to read a less sensationalist report of the weekend’s events than those provided by the mainstream media then I’d recommend those on SleepMonsters and planetFear.

Wet and dark

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

It was cold and wet this evening but that didn’t seem to deter a good crowd turning up for tonight’s run – in semi-darkness despite a six o-clock start. You can see the anti-clockwise loop below. I should probably add that the orienteers in the group obviously did some entirely different loop out to the east due to the embargoed area for next year’s British Champs – I just lent my watch to one of the other group. 😉
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XC season kicks off

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

673The Hampshire Cross-Country League kicked off on Saturday at Farley Mount. I had a nice pre-race snooze with Emma as she’d fallen asleep in the car on the way there. She did wake up in time for us to go and see Christine put on a good show for her second lap.
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Frozen savings

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

We’re still reeling a bit today from the fact that, as a result of the collapse of Landsbanki, we can’t currently access a large chunk of our savings held with icesave. More worrying is that, despite having intended to do so on numerous occasions, we just simply hadn’t got round to spreading our savings around to ensure that we were under the FSCS limit. Absolutely stupid in hindsight particularly given all the warnings but there we go. Anyway, nothing we can do about it now so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Looks like we might have to put our plan to upsize whilst the housing market is depressed on hold for a bit now…

Six ponds

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

As is traditional, for our first run from Fritham we took in the six ponds: Green Pond (on Fritham Plain), Cadman’s Pool, Ocknell Pond, Janesmoor Pond, Longcross Pond and Eyeworth Pond. There was a good turnout despite the darkness, wind and drizzle. I was certainly grateful for having donned a long sleeved top and waterproof when we were heading back across Longcross Plain straight in to the driving rain!
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