Owls Count

Today was my club’s annual Boxing Day mass start score event. The format is one hour score with a few bonus controls (Father Christmas, a fairy, and a Christmas Tree). A few photos from the event are here. Entry was slightly up on last year, as it has been for the last few years. I reckon, once you have counted everyone, that we got around 325 people in total.

The planner had made good use of the area giving a course that gave everyone a challenge. No one got all the controls - Tom Bray (SN) going the closest, getting all bar two controls in a few seconds over the hour. Obviously the results for this event can be a bit skewed - as each on the bonus controls is worth 50 points.

I had a good run round. Picked up 490 points in total - which was 430 in controls, 100 for FC and the tree, less a penalty on 40 for being back one and a half minutes late. I picked a reasonable route round, but recent illness meant that I struggled in the later part of the hour to keep my pace up.

Embarrassingly I finished behind my mother - same points total, but she was a little quicker.

My research group runs two MSc courses in the area of network and collaborative computing. One of these includes the possibility to take several mathematics modules. These courses are taught with one week intensive modules on a subject. This meant that I spent the past week teaching the first Linear Algebra module. This module covers direct and indirect methods for solving systems of linear algebraic equations.

In my previous entry I mentioned that I was still suffering the after effects of flu - meaning I started the week with a sore throat. Not the best way to start when one is lecturing 10+ hours and when one has to be available to answer questions during 10+ hours of practical sessions.

This is the first time I have lectured this course - before I had only taught the practical sessions. Overall it went fairly well - though I was really struggling to speak by the end of the week. I taught it from an old set of lecture notes, produced by previous lecturers of this course - which at least meant that the preparation time was not too great.

On the way to this event we drove through heavy rain and several stretches of flooded road. On arrival in the car park we learnt that those coming from the west had had hail and thunderstorms on the way. So it was with some relief to that when I went out to compete it was sunny.

The course was split into two sections - the first half across Pitch Hill and the top of Winterfold was a series of longer legs; the second half was a series of short legs across the bottom, more technical part, of the area. So just when you were shattered from lots of running you had to get the brain working. In the first half there was also a very good 2km leg (there has been discussion of route choice for the long leg on Nopesport and my route choice is here). All over I felt that the planner had made good use of the area.

My run was fairly consistent. A small stop to catch breath on the way to number two delayed me by 30 seconds or so. Executed the long leg well - I took the route just north of the straight line. Then lost a minute on number 11 when I overshot the pit and repeated this mistake on number 15 when looking for a gully. This time on the area I ran round the big re-entrant in the south of the area - having gone straight down and up last time.

Overall I was fairly pleased. Recovering from flu I was struggling with the running in a few places, but managed to keep my concentration.

Last week I was in Florida for SC06. The locals were saying it had recently got colder, which translated to only 25ish daytime temperatures. Of course the warm weather did not agree with me and I went down with flu and spent most of the week stuck in the hotel.

My colleagues assure me that it was a good event and that the social events were good fun. They also went off to see Kennedy Space Center. The hotel we were booked into was right next to one of the best steak restaurants in the USA - so we were well fed

After running the day before and recent long hours in work this was probably not an event for me. Which was a shame, as it was glorious out in the New Forest - good weather and a good forest. I ended up abandoning my course, having a refreshing run around, and punching some of the controls on my course - rather than the more traditional idea of visiting all the controls in order. From what I did do of the course I felt that the area could have been better used. A look at the map shows a lot of similar length legs.