Training Log Archive: Ollie

Just entered all days at the Scottish 6 Days in August, running M21S. Bring on Le Tour de Tay, Rob!

Cycle from Northaw Great Wood back home, via Cuffley, Crews Hill, Enfield Lock and the Lea Valley. Found it a little hard going, possibly because of the surface, mainly because of my heavy pack.

No idea of the actual time taken, so estimating 90 minutes.

Cycle to Finsbury Park station and then from Crews Hill to Northaw Great Wood.

Varsity Match Relay at Northaw Great Wood. Sunny and pretty warm for April. Dry underfoot. Forest had quite a lot of fallen branches and brambles on the ground in places - even in sections marked as white forest. Ran a Long course, on the last leg. Our team came last (out of 13) but all three of us took almost exactly the same time - for different length legs - so I think we should get a prize for most consistent team.

Varsity Match Men's A course at Epping Forest North West. Sunny conditions, quite warm, the forest looked lovely. However underneath the banks of dry leaves lurked very wet and muddy ditches, these were tricky to spot and best avoided.

I had what I thought was a good run. However Control 2 was in the wrong place when I got there - I did run to the correct place and spotted the tape. It took 3-4 minutes of running around to spot it on a nearby unmarked knoll. This also distracted me during the next leg so I made another 3 minute mistake here, searching up the wrong gully. I ran to the finish during leg 5-6, to report the mistake, which wasted another minute or so. So I ended up finishing only just behind a lot of people - but well behind the counting Oxford runners.

Saw a snake on the approach to Control 21, which was quite exciting. It made a distinctive loud slithering sound as it headed back into the undergrowth. It was about a metre long and green/brown.

Actual distance run 11.3km.

Newham Classic 10k. A local race for me, this started in Stratford and then headed onto the Greenway - then back into Stratford, along to West Ham Park and back around. I knew that the ramp up to the Greenway at 2.5km would be thin, so got off to a quick start and there were no queues. On coming back down, there was quite a big queue going up which I was glad to have missed. I think if the course had been run in reverse this would have been avoided. A great race overall though and I hope that future years will get more access to the Olympic Park area.

36 seconds off my PB and 75s off my 40-minute season target.
(N.B. My official chip time was 41:41 and my race time was 41:21 - not sure why the chip time is higher than the race time or higher than my GPS time.)

Lincoln's Inn Fields

Cycle from London (Hackney) to Cuckfield (near Haywards Heath) with Anna. Followed the London-Brighton route from Clapham to Turner's Hill, deviating to go through Tooting Common and Outwood. Six hills, the one at the very end was the most painful! I did struggle a little bit on my mountain bike. Time includes stops, and a 25 minute break at the half-way point. Moving time was 3h 37.

Cuckfield to Haywards Heath. Downhill the entire way - lovely.

From East Croydon to Gipsy Hill - via Crystal Palace - a real killer climb! Time includes various pauses for breath.

Gipsy Hill to Hackney, via Dulwich, Denmark Hill, Elephant & Castle and London Bridge. Mainly following the well-waymarked London Cycle Route 23, as far as Elephant & Castle.

On a steel bike with two working gears! From Lasswade, up the steep hill to Bonnyrigg, then along the Penicuik to Dalkeith cycle path, as far as Penicuik, then back along to Roslin Glen, where I turned off and into the glen, walked the bike up to the castle, and then cycled across the Bilston Glen Viaduct and back to Lasswade. Numerous short stops to write down various notes for OSM mapping, moving time was nearly an hour less.

Relay Race - ran 3rd in the 4-leg Men's Premier, for the SLOW Piccadilly team.

Event: JK 2009
 

Sprint, Newcastle City Centre.

Final SLOW 2008-9 Street Race series event, at Pimlico, including Victoria and Belgravia. Lovely, flat area with lots of roads - most reminiscent of the LOK West End Street-O. For several legs I had to count off the number of roads I was crossing, and remember to head down the fourth or fifth one I crossed.

Despite my legs still aching from the half marathon on Sunday, I felt fine once I started running, and, although I never pushed the pace, I felt I had a good flow. I had some trouble at a couple of controls, it later transpired these were in slightly the wrong place due to a late revision in the map (but with the old clues being used).

Some excitement when running past Westminster Abbey - Tamil protestors were coming the other way and there was the sinister din of close-range police helicopters above. I had to try and drown this out to work out exactly where I was on the map.

Probably my favourite of all the Street-O areas this year. I'm hoping to organise the next one, in September in Bow.

Event: Chris Hoy Edinburgh Half Marathon
 

Chris Hoy Edinburgh Half-Marathon. A really early start (up at 7am) to make it to the start at Meadowbank Stadium. After a bit of waiting around, the 2500 runners were led out onto the road by a pipe band, and then we were off. I was running by the time I crossed the start line, and got off to a fast start. As my first "road" half-marathon, I was aiming for a 90 minute time. However, my complete lack of running training - and a couple of sprints the day before - showed, and I was consistently off the pace after the first six miles, steadily getting slower and slower between mile 2 and mile 12. In particular, the last three miles were back the way we came, and on swinging around, the pleasant tailwind became quite a strong (and cold) headwind, immediately slowing me down by 30 seconds/mile. It required quite a lot of motivation at this point to not stop running, but nobody else around me seemed to be suffering, so I just kept going.

I somehow found a bit of energy for the final mile (alongside Musselburgh Race Course) and made it into the finish at the grandstand, coming in 325th. My parents were late to the grandstand and arrived a few minutes after I finished.

A nice, flat course, with only a slight climb at the beginning and at the turn. The weather - cool but sunny - was also very pleasant, never too hot to work up a proper sweat.

What I need to do now is start doing a bit of running training (as well as the cycling I've mainly been doing recently) and then have another few goes, hopefully steadily taking down the PB.

Mile splits: 7:15, 6:56 (downhill), 7:08, 7:09, 7:13, 7:15, 7:19, 7:26, 7:30, 7:29, 7:55 (into the wind), 7:57, 7:40, 0:51. Out in 47:06, back in 50:08.

Event: British Sprint O Champs
 

British Age-Class Championships at the Stirling University campus. Running Course 1 (M21). Actual distance run was 3.5km.

A solid, if not particularly fast, run. The course wasn't too technical, and there wasn't much "urban" running. The most interesting section was the first bit, with short legs in a small managed forest. Much of the rest of the course was a fairly linear and straightforward run back to assembly. A 10-metre hill right at the end meant for a tough, but spectacular final leg to the finish line.

British Age-Class Sprint Championships at the Stirling University campus. The second race, a couple of hours after the first. This race had a much greater urban element, with lots of small legs around the science park followed by a spectacular long (4 minute) leg across the bridge, with a final, more technical section around more buildings. Luckily, for this section, there was a faster person just in front of me who made the mistakes so I didn't have to. I still got the penultimate leg wrong though.

It was a bitterly cold and windy wait at the start, but OK once the run got going, and the sun even came out as I crossed the finish line.