Training Log Archive: Ollie

Race the Castles: Stirling.

Straight into the castle for seven controls - fast, fun. Then sections through a hilly park and then a flat, post-industrial wasteland/surburban housing area "Forthside" before into the main city centre, out to a field with a series of ditches, then the big climb up to a graveyard beside the castle, and finally around the old town - the classically interesting, urban technical bit. So all in a good bit of variety and an interesting map to run around. Personally I prefer Edinburgh with its closes and intricate housing estates, but Stirling was certainly very pleasant too.

GPS says I ran 12.3km, an impressive 64% over the straight line. Strava says I only did 260m of climb which I can believe, in fact probably quite a bit less than that. Certainly not the 320m posted. Finished 9th of around 50. Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/206505853

Much better map printing than yesterday's. 1:4000 scale helped but no pixeling visible at all and features were clear and sharp. Same printer, but looking at the two maps side-by-side, the difference is huge.

Only problem was unnecessary white buffering beside the magenta course lines, meant that I thought there was a crossing point in a wall in one place, and there wasn't. White buffering is debatably useful for control circles but I don't think it's ever needed for course lines, especially if underlying black bleeds through the line anyway (which it did here) - the "overprint effect".

C • printing 2

Event: Race the Castles
 

Race the Castles: Edinburgh. GPS says I ran 9.5km. Big home advantage - I was familiar with most of the map. The map also tended to avoid some of the most technical sections. The planning was good though with a good tour of several sections of the Old Town, a section through the steep part of Princes Street Gardens below the tunnel, which was fun and new, and a couple of classic long legs with lots of route choice - most failed to spot the best route on the first which was flatter but longer. Finished 11th out of a big group, six minutes behind the winner - very happy.

Special note/grumble: The quality of printing of the map was extremely poor - e.g. in some places, steps had blurred to the point they were not visible, and uncrossable walls on either sides of some passages had bled across each other. There was also an overabundance of form lines - essentially these formed a 2.5m contour in much of the map rather than just "showing form" as they should. The map has been overly rasterised and individual pixels can be clearly seen on the map, the DPI looks very low. The 1:4000 map used by the sprint courses was less affected (though still blurry) so something has gone wrong with the switch to 1:5000 for the main courses.

C • Map 6

Edinburgh Waverley thru Loanhead.

Race the Castles Prologue, around the West End of Edinburgh. Complete disaster for me - I fell into all the traps, and near the end just took irrational decisions and changed level repeatedly where there was no need. Finished well down in the results - bottom third.

One of the slowest (dry) commutes in, due to a strong headwind.