Training Log Archive: Ollie

HAVOC Epping South-West. Ran Brown (top course). Warm and sunny day. A few muddy/wet bits underground. Two big mistakes on long legs in the middle of the race. The map is quite vague here and doesn't correspond well to the detail on the ground, with two many areas just shown with various shades of green. It could greatly benefit from having large, distinctive trees included as point features, as these are very obvious on the ground. But - a lovely area to run in, especially as parts of it have been thinned, and a beautiful day to be running in too. Actual distance run was just over 13km.

JK Relays at the lower part of Graythwaite. Lovely technical forest (except for a scrappy bit at the north end of the map) and some nice, exciting racing with lots of other people in all directions, as tends to happen at big relays! Running the middle (shorter) leg in the Men's 3rd team for SLOW, for the JK Trophy class. Finished 34th of 45 completing teams. Our 1st, 2nd and 4th teams finished 18th, 29th and 40th respectively, so at least we got our order of teams right!

JK Day 3 on Bigland. M35. Tough physically and technically, this is a classic area. The first section, on rough pastureland, was tough underfoot, but this was followed by a pleasant Scandinavian-forest section, then into the steep forested slopes for the second half of the course - I used a bypass option for a couple of the longer legs here. Great area. Quite a few small & medium-sized mistakes. Which I'd taken a bit less time! 12th of 18 completers - disappointing.

JK Day 2. Tough, physical course in a new area - Ulpha Park. Including a couple of steep and technical forest sections, a couple of moorland sections, and a nasty green forest, so a real mix. Struggled a bit, particularly with a couple of very steep downhill sections near the end. Finished 10th of 20 completers.

JK Sprint - Lancaster University. Enjoyable course, with some good mixing of technicality and speed. Very wet underfoot after heavy rain earlier, a lot of the grass sections had turned to mud and approaching some controls without slipping was difficult! Finished 8th of 21 completers. A very late start, having had one of my trains up from London cancelled.