Owls Count

It has been a hot week. Reading University’s weather station recorded the hottest temperature of the not only this year, but of the last three years, at 5:09pm – 28.9C. Not ideal conditions for racing, which was a problem as I was entered for the second race in the Yateley 10k series. The race organisers had taken note of the conditions by adding an extra drinks point.

I ran 45:01 in the first race and my race plan consisted of starting at a similar pace to last time and then to see how I felt running in the heat. It is quite a while since I have run on a really hot day and my past experiences in the heat have not been good.

We lined up in a similar place to last time and started at a reasonable pace – careful not to go off too fast. The first part of the course has some uphills in it and the first two km were fairly even: 4:35 and 4:37.

The third km included the first drinks point and I really needed some water at this point. I lost a few seconds making sure I collected a drink an so the km was a little slower: 4:41.

The fourth km includes a decent downhill stretch and I allowed myself to speed up a bit. It was noticeable by now that we were overtaking quite a few people. The 3:56 for the km did not feel too fast.

From here it was a case of making sure that my pace did not drop. The second water point was towards the end of this km and I made a mess of taking the water and splashed a cup of water over the child handing it out. Ooops! A few more seconds lost to make sure I got a drink: 4:39.

During the next two km I kept pushing the pace and my friend did ask why we were going so fast. By this time we were steadily overtaking the line of runners. 4:13 and 4:21 shows that this was where I gained some time on my PB.

The eight km was tough work and my pace started to drop. The km split was 4:43 and seeing that spurred me on to start increasing the pace.

It was tough by this point, but we were in the shade for parts and that was appreciated. I took on a little more water – to wet my mouth, so that I would not be distracted by it feeling dry. Slightly faster – 4:31.

The last km starts with a uphill section. At the start of this I increased my effort and my friend wished me good luck and told me to get moving quickly. I told him to keep his pace up and that he could still get a new PB. I tried to sprint in the field but failed and kept to a steady pace – I had nothing left to give for the last 100m. A 4:15 last km.

Overall a time of 44:30 – giving me a twenty second PB! I am pleased to have run so well – particularly on such a hot evening.

Last weekend I went to Wales for a weekend of orienteering. A middle distance race on Clydach Terrace and the Harvester Relays on Merthyr Common. Both area had been used for Creoso 2008, but I did not attend as I was in Chicago at the time.

Clydach Terrace
As we were staying reasonably close to this event we arrived early. The event parking was at a school, with use of the running track changing rooms. The course map is available – I have not plotted my route, as I am not quite sure where I went.

I started a little slowly – making sure that I got the first control spot on and using the time to get into the map. I lost 45s going to #5 – I recall that I dropped too far down the hill.

I ran and navigated well for the next chunk of the course. Managing to stay in touch with the map while keeping the pace up. I then lost 75s at #17 – I think I got confused by the vegetation change being indistinct. #24 saw a 45s loss – I went off course and then struggled to pick up which hole I was meant to be in.

I am then frustrated with my run to #26. I switched off on this long leg and revisited #21 and #18 on route. It was disappointing to lose 90s that close to the end! On the last long leg, into the final control, I tried to push the pace, but the vegetation here was difficult to run through. My finish time was 60:02 – a most frustrating two seconds. However, I was only 21 minutes down on the winner.

Merthyr Common
The Harvester Relays are a night/day competition. Both relay classes start at night and then finish in the early morning – the courses are set so that the winning teams should have half the running before dawn and half after, with the slower teams having progressively more day time running. I do not orienteer at night and so I was given the longest of the day time sections – which meant that I was the last runner for our team. If your team has slipped far enough behind the leaders then they hold a mini mass start and send the remaining runners off.

One of the big decisions of this event, particularly for the last runners in a team, is to how much sleep you try to get. Is it better to get a few hours of interrupted sleep or to stay up all night? I decided to have some sleep, which I felt was right. I was woken at 2:45am when our first runner got back and had to wake our second runner up – so much for setting an alarm! I went back to sleep and then woke up at around 4am I ate some food and went to find out how the relays were going. I was fairly sure I would be off in the mini mass start, which I did indeed do, but needed to make sure.

I started at 6:45am, with a group of others. I thought I had a grip on the map early on the way to the first control, but proceeded to lose 3 minutes running around in the wrong place – a very poor start.

From here on I was running with a group for most of the rest of the course. I am pleased with my navigation on the long leg, but should have pushed the pace more. I had a 90s miss on #13, though I am not sure what happened here.

The most annoying mistake though was on leaving #15 I misread the map and thought the spectator control was next. I decided that this was an ideal time to break away from the group and sped up. The only problem was that halfway down the hill I realised that I had a control to visit before the spectator one and lost a minute climbing back up to it and, more importantly, I lost the impetus I had had to break away.

Overall, I just beat 75 minutes. I reckon that without the mistakes and by pushing the pace more, which I should have done, then I would have beaten 65 minutes.

Today I presented at the Reading e-Research Open Meeting. My presentation is on that website, but that set of slides is my notes rather than the presentation slides I displayed. My usual presentation style is to use many slides. Instead, for this fifteen minute presentation I decided to try a different style and I went minimalist. In the presentation I showed two slides [1] – two and ten from the longer presentation – and drew similar images to those on slide three [2].

I found this to work fairly well. Certainly it stopped me from just reading the slides and just stand and talk about my research. I could have used some better flash cards/notes – just to have some reminder of areas I wanted to mention. I certainly feel this needs experimenting with and more trails. And that is good – I am giving a seminar [3] next week!

Notes
[1] I used no title slide either – everyone in the meeting had a schedule with my name on it and I had just been introduced.
[2] The images on slide three are not those drawn in the meeting. Instead, they are images I drew especially to put in the longer version of the slides.
[3] For the research group weekly meeting.