David Currie

272It wasn’t until about 11 o’clock on Saturday night that, having consulted the weather forecast, I decided that I would head east for Portsmouth Joggers’ annual Meon Valley Plod the following morning. It was a new course this year (not that I have run the old one) which proved to be nearer 20.5 miles rather than the 19.5 that were advertised. Disappointly, the amount of road running has also increased from around 3 miles to over 5 with another couple on concrete farm tracks. I was therefore glad to have taken the advice of those at registration and worn trainers rather than fell shoes.

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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.

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.

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!

It was the Hampshire Cross Country Champs at Memorial Park in Basingstoke today. As usual, my pre-race preparation was pretty dire. Spent the morning trying to buy some new shoes having written off my last pair of fell shoes at the OMM. Failed miserably (couldn’t justify a pair of XC spikes to myself) and ended up running in my orienteering shoes. Christine had declined to spectate in the pouring rain so I had to navigate my own way to the race. Finding the park was simple enough but finding somewhere to park was somewhat harder. One lap of Basingstoke later I eventually located the official car park only to be told that, even if I did get in, I probably wouldn’t get out again due to the mud! Consequently I ended up in a city centre multi-storey and ran back to the park.

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239I had to scrape the ice off the car on Sunday morning but by the time we had reached Beaulieu Road station for the start of the third “Run the Pubs” it was a balmy five degrees. The route for this annual event takes in all the New Forest pubs that we have visited for our Tuesday night runs in the preceding summer. This year, this meant the High Corner Inn was replaced by the Fighting Cocks at Godshill.

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