Training Log Archive: Ollie

Via Aldgate.

From uni to Battersea (via Clapham) and then back home (via Lambeth Palace.) The first half of the return was through extremely wet and unpleasant weather, with sheets of rain coming across the road. I should have got the tube.

To/from CASA, via Bethnal Green Road.

With heavy pack, from college. Went the new, short way.

Ran Brown at EUOC District Event at Holyrood Park in central Edinburgh. Holyrood Park is not your normal inner city park, as the 450m climb on this course shows. The main summit, Arthur's Seat, is 250m high, and the course included a leg with this summit in between two controls.

The weather was clear and sunny, but there was a very strong westerly wind, which made half the controls tough going. In fact, in places, it was pretty much impossible to run into the wind. There were also a number of tough uphill legs - some just a straight 100m climb, others involving tricky navigation around steeply banked gorse and lines of cliffs that pervade the park.

This was undoubtably one of the most scenic areas I have ever run in - the views over Edinburgh were stunning, and the course took us to most of the big viewpoints.

I didn't make any significant mistakes, just found it slow going in places, and very tough in the wind.

Mistakes:
To 1: Poor route choice (1m)
To 4: Poor route choice - through gorse! (30s)
To 7: Poor route choice - stuck in gorse! (30s)
To 17: Overshot (45s)
To 25: Poor navigation (45s)

My GPS says I ran 9km, my splits are:
8:15, 7:21, 9:51, 8:43, 6:17, 7:32, 10:17, 6:52, (7:32)

Finished 17th of 49 starters, 42 of whom finished. Winning was 54:37, third place was 62:16.

Event: Edinburgh Big Weekend
 

Cycling in to King's Cross to catch early an morning train to Edinburgh.

EUOC Edinburgh Street Race, in the Old Town. Actual distance run (according to GPS) was 8.4km. I had a storming run - just five minutes down on Nick B. He started seven minutes down, and I saw him a few controls back, around half way round, so stepped up my pace, which was already quite good. Home advantage helped too - I am quite familiar with the general layout of the area, having grown up in and around the city.

The run itself was pretty fault free, with just a couple of slow route choices - an unnecessary climb up to the Castle Esplanade on leaving No. 9, for example - and a bit of darting in and out of the wrong closes.

Highlights of the event were the numerous legs on the Royal Mile, peppered with narrow closes to spot and run down, and the weird grassy section outside the Scottish Parliament near the end - rather unconventional.

However I noticed after the finish that I had crossed a street that was marked as out of bounds. The red route lines had been bent around such streets for previous legs, but not for this one, and I just didn't notice the thin red hashing - my map was folded across the line too, which didn't help.

Looking at the results, 69 people completed the race successfully and 30 were disqualified for this mistake, including myself, APers JonX and Becks. As Ian C would say, a bit of a pharce.

Taking into account times for everyone, including the disqualified people, I would have finished around 9th. Adding 75 seconds to account for the longer route I would have taken if I hadn't made the mistake, I would have finished 12th. Two people who DSQd got a better time than me.

If there's one positive from this, it is that I will be very careful at introducing and displaying out of bounds areas onto the London map that aren't construction sites or other large, walled areas.

HR was a bit too high on this race - I generally run as fast as I can, and I'm not sure if it's over a "safe" limit or whether it's just indicating that I'm a little out of fitness.

Mistakes:
To 2: Ran down wrong close (20s)
To 5: Distracted by youths who were actually trying to help (15s)
To 7: Had trouble finding the actual control (20s)
To 10: Poor route choice - wasted climb (20s)
To 16: Hesitation - red circle obscured a wall (10s)
To 22: Erm, yeah. Didn't see the OOB hashings (-75s)
To 24: Poor route choice - went the long way around (15s)
To 26: Ran down wrong close (20s)

Splits: 5:15, 5:28, 5:32, 4:41, 4:32, 5:13, 4:45, 5:28, (4:44)

C • OOB 4

Warm down jog with Nick B around the field by the assembly. It was starting to rain so it was fairly short.

Nightmare commute - went the direct way to Victoria Park and along the Regent's Canal, but there was a strong headwind for almost all of the way. Tough going.

Thanks to tailwind, and a new, shorter route, this is my record time back home from uni. Went along Percival Street, continued roughly in a straight line until I hit City Road just before the Old Street roundabout. Then along Great Eastern Road, Bethnal Green Road and home. Not a nice route during rush hour but fine after it. The tailwind undoubtably helped too. I can probably save a couple more hundred metres with further route optimisations. The straight-line distance is 4.27km.

Via Great Eastern Street, as per the satnav on my phone. Disappointingly, it proved not to be a quicker way (I was going fast) although it was a little shorter.

Via Great Eastern Street but stopped at Spitalfields Market.

To/from CASS. Hurrying on the way there as a bit late. Out via Great Eastern Street, which is a little quicker but more clogged up with traffic. Back the same way, but was quieter.

More field surveying for the City of London map. I hadn't been going to do it this weekend - but I never made it to the OCAD training course due to a bike puncture, so this was Plan B. Did the section between Cheapside and Cannon Street. A very boring section - nearly half is made up of three huge construction sites, and there is little of interest in the remaining space, apart from a couple of small gardens and some alleyways around Bow Lane.

C • how is it going? 2

To St Margaret's (near Twickenham) from home, via Pimlico and Sheen (1h 25, 27.7km), then back home from Waterloo. All after dark.

To/from CASA, with slight detours.

Back home from Notting Hill Gate, via Oxford Street and Bank.

Home to/from Waterloo, to/from Fleet to Yateley Heath, and home to/from Shoreditch.

BAOC Yateley Heath & Minley Woods - CompassSport Cup Qualifying Round event. A typical Berkshire army area, with mixed woodland, the odd bit of heather and bog, pockets of intricateness, and some very pleasant vegetation free wooded sections.

I ran the Brown (Open) course. I thought I did OK after an appalling start, but it turns out I was quite a bit off the pace, and ended up not counting for SLOW. However, SLOW did still comfortably win the competition and so qualify for the finals in the autumn.

WEATHER: Overcast, but didn't rain, and wasn't too cold or windy. There was quite a lot of water/mud on the ground from overnight rain - but I finished without getting too damp.

MISTAKE ANALYSIS:
1: A massive mistake off the start - I misidentified a junction, failed to notice the directions didn't match with my compass, and went well off line. This was a four minute mistake on what should have been a 90 second leg. Clearly I was a bit rusty after no "proper" orienteering for a couple of months. 4m.
2: Because of my unorthodox approach to 1, I exited along the line back to the start, not the line towards 2. I had to stop and think for quite a bit before I realised what I had done. 1m 30.
6: A tricky one this - I tried to aim off, so knowing which way to turn along the linear feature. But I was well off where I thought I was and so ran the wrong way. 1m.
10: I went the "direct" way, as did most people, but found it tough going. A better route choice was around the paths. 1m.
20: Tricky to find this bingo control, not helped by me leaving the previous control at a poor angle - I was distracted by a much better orienteer! 1m.
24: A 100m leg that I still managed to mess up - a lot of pressure here near the finish. Poor direction. 30s.
26: Very short leg, but poor direction - ended up well left of where I should have been .1m.
27: Overshot, as did quite a lot of people - the vegetation/mapping was a little vague here. 1m.

10.5 minutes of mistakes. Ouch. Most of these (1, 6, 20, 24, 26) were due to running in the wrong direction. I clearly wasn't making good use of the compass.

To Notting Hill Gate, via Victoria station. The last bit involved chasing a bus from Victoria, across Hyde Park (I went through, the bus obviously went around) to Notting Hill.

Along the canal. Going fast! I think my hillwalking all last week has improved my fitness.

Stopping in Angel, then along the canal & Roman Road.

Day 7 of the JOK New Year trip. After clearing out of the bunkhouse and leaving behind blue skies above Torridon, we drove south-east towards Dalwhinnie, where various clouds had gathered and it was busy slowing. Walking with just Ed, we started at 350m altitude and walked with almost military pace along the road beside the Allt Cuaich and up on to Meall Chuaich, just 600m higher and the solitary summit of the day. Weather alternated between snow shows (not too much wind though, so quite pleasant) and misty views. The cloud base was at 900m so we just missed the view from the summit. The route down - back the same way - was enlivened by snow ptarmigan and the odd mountain hair. It was only a short day but my legs were aching a lot at the end due to the lively pace. We only stopped for a total of 10 minutes - compared with well over an hour of breaks for the other days.

One Munro: Meall Chuaich (951m).

The journey south proved interesting - on leaving Dalwhinnie and driving over the Drumochter Pass there was only a small amount of snow on the A9. As we descended though, we were soon into blizzard conditions - cars in convoy, snow ploughs and gritters trying to keep the road passable. It probably wasn't best to hang around as the road looked like it was going to get blocked any minute. In the end though, we got to Edinburgh and made the last train of the day down to London.

Six new Munros - and the first Munros since 2003. I must get up into the Scottish Highlands a lot more this year.

Day 6 of the JOK New Year trip. Climbed Moruisg and Sgurr nan Ceannaichean, from Glen Carron (150m.) A slower pace than for previous days. Generally good weather, a little mist for a while on the top of the second peak. Pretty chilly on the top, but altogether a straightforward day and I had plenty of energy left in the end. Walked with Jon X, Beccy and Pete. Both Munros had two summits, apparently at identical heights, and with the OS Landranger and Pathfinder maps disagreeing as to the true summits...

Two Munros: Moruisg (928m) and Sgurr nan Ceannaichean (915m - has the dubious distinction of being the lowest Munro.)

INVOC New Year Score event at Ord Hill, just north of Inverness. Cold and overcast day. The event was a mass start one-hour score. Each control was worth its number, i.e. control 14 was worth 14 points. There were 21 controls. The highest scoring weren't necessarily the hardest to get, in fact 20 and 21 were right by the start. Competitors carried a balloon - those finishing with it intact got an extra 20 points. Mine burst as I unwisely pushed through a gorse bush on the way to my fourth control.

I scored 188 points, by getting 14 controls, including 12-21 and four lower scoring ones. The map was a bit of a nightmare - it was already quite green, and parts of the white forest had turned very green. For one control, I gave up pushing through the thick green forest (marked white on the map) and returned later from below. Another was impossible from my direction, even though the map was again white - so I had to give up on it.

Finished with a minute to spare. Ed won, I came pleasingly high up in the results. (Maximum score was 251, Ed got 235 and Jon X 203. I beat Pete H, who got 171.) Results.