The year is nearly finished, so time for a review or my running and orienteering! Miles run: 1433 Days run: 182 Races: 14 Orienteering: 26 Best Race Windsor Half Marathon – paced this really well and ran strongly for much of the time, lowering my PB to 1:42:10. Best Orienteering British Sprint Championships at Warwick [...]
A good amount of reading this year – 83 books read! The best ones, in no particular order, were: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Airman by Eoin Colfer A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory Lucas by Kevin Brooks
On Saturday afternoon I went and ran a track mile – the first time I had run on a track! This event was organised through the running website Fetcheveryone – combining some running and socialising. Oh, and cake eating! I went round a few times to warm up and get used to the feel of [...]
Another trip yesterday to Basingstoke to run in the weekly parkrun 5k. It was also the Christmas event and social, which meant that several people were in fancy dress. My parents were also around with mum also running the 5k. I had decided that I would start off and see if I was up for [...]
I updated WordPress the other day. This blog is now running on WordPress 2.7. I am really liking the new admin look and feel. Also, about a month ago I changed theme on this site. This was mainly to change the prominence of the elements displaying integration with other websites. If you spot any problems [...]
This morning saw another trip to Basingstoke to run the weekly 5k parkrun. Being able to run a simple, efficiently organised event each week is good. I did not run a PB today but did put in a solid run, finishing in 20:37. After I joined some of the others runners for coffee and a [...]
The plan for this race was simple. A quick warm up, then some miles at intended race pace of 8mm, followed by the half marathon at the same 8mm pace, and finishing with a quick warm down. This would mean that the half marathon would be run in a time three minutes slower than my [...]
Saturday morning saw an early start, so that I could get to Basingstoke in time for the parkrun 5k. Last time I had been down I had not eaten enough before going, so I started this morning with a good combination of cereal, a banana, and coffee. The trip to the park involved a 2 [...]
Saturday evening involved some of the group heading off to night orienteer around another part of Leeds. While they were doing that the rest of us found a place to get curry and watched TV. Sunday saw the final part of the weekend – an urban orienteering race around Skipton. On arriving at the race [...]
Having finished at Hyde park we then moved over to Leeds University. As we were fairly early we started by going into the student union and having a mid-morning coffee and cake. A chasing sprint orienteering event comprises of two races. In the first race, often called the prologue, you visit all the control points [...]
I was heading up north for a weekend of orienteering. On Saturday the races were in Leeds and they started late enough in the day that I could go and run the local parkrun first. We stayed on the outskirts of Leeds and woke early enough for me to eat breakfast before travelling in to [...]
Yesterday saw the Compass Sport Cup and Trophy final in Sutton Park. The two competitions are the UK inter-club orienteering competitions, with the cup being for the ‘big’ clubs and the trophy being for the ‘small’ clubs. Last year my club, Wimborne Orienteers, finished a disappointing seventh in the trophy. My own run was fairly [...]
A while back I went to the inaugural North Hampshire Time Trial. Since then the series has been rebranded and the event is now the Basingstoke parkrun, but this was the first Saturday where I had managed to get back again. I started fairly well – managing to keep at a reasonable pace, but without [...]
Over the past few years urban orienteering has been going from strength to strength in the UK – whether it be navigating the complexities of a city centre or a university campus. In the past twelve months I have orienteered around Warwick, Oxford, York, and Stockport; and also Surrey, Warwick, and Sussex universities. Yesterday saw [...]
Yesterday saw a trip to Windsor to run in the 26th Windsor Half Marathon. A 1pm start saw an odd morning routine based around deciding when to eat and then travelling early to avoid the traffic. A bit before the start of the race I went for a slow warm up. This did not have [...]
This past weekend I travelled down to near Brighton for the SE Sprint and Relay Championships. We stayed at Blacklands Farm Campsite, which had basic toilet and shower facilities and a large camping field. The weather over the weekend was reasonable, except on Sunday morning there was a thunderstorm that started just after we had [...]
Following on from the SE Sprint Championships was the South East Relay Championships, taking place in Stanmer Park and the University of Sussex. I was running in a non-competitive, due to being out of region, handicap team with my parents. Dad had first leg and set out well on the middle length course. His course [...]
At the weekend I travelled down to Sussex for the South East Sprint and Relay Championships. For the past two weeks I have been training heavily and I was not sure how my legs would feel trying to run fast. SE Sprint – Race 1 I started well. For the first four controls my navigation [...]
A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Chicago for Terminus. The Narrate Conferences team put on a terrific event – combining an extensive academic program with wizard rock, Quidditch, and fan exploration. I was out to meet with friends and also was one of the volunteers – registration and information were my main areas, [...]
WordPress 2.6.1 has been released. Upgrade went smoothly and everything seems fine – if you do notice a problem with the site then let me know. I got back from nine days in Chicago on Wednesday. While there there was an impressive thunderstorm. I’ll post more about my Chicago trip at some stage.
Yesterday I took part in the ‘Down Tow Up Flow’ Thames Towpath Half Marathon 2008 – a run along the Thames tow path from Windsor to Marlow. During last week I kept checking the weather forecast and it kept point to a hot day. Yep, the forecasters were right – it started hot and just [...]
WordPress 2.6 has been released. I have upgraded this blog – a rather quick and easy process. Also, I have moved server recently. Hopefully everything is up and working correctly. If not let me know. The move was fairly painless – just a little while spent working out where all the setting were kept.
This past weekend I went to the inaugural North Hampshire Time Trial – a 5k race around the Basingstoke War Memorial Park. I travelled down on the morning by train and walked across to the park. It would have made more sense to use the journey to the park as a warm up, but I [...]
Even though I arrived in plenty of time I failed to warm up properly. The mass start ensured a fast early pace, even if I took most the way to the first control to get my map under control in the strong winds. The first few controls were about maintaining a good pace in the [...]
As I was heading up to Stockport for the weekend, for the orienteering and to visit family, I decided I would also get up in time to run this 5k race. Originally I had planned to travel up on Friday, but plans changed and I ended up driving up on Saturday morning – meaning a [...]
A rather good Father’s Day outing – with most of the family running. The course went round the town I lived in for ten years. I started at a good pace and after 600m realised that I was just behind my brother. I ran down the main hill with him, but he pulled away just [...]
I have been meaning to go up to York for the city race for a few years now, but there has always been something else happening on the bank holiday weekend. This year was different and so I put the race in my calendar. We stayed at a camp site just outside York and while [...]
This past weekend saw the JOK Chasing Sprint and Harvester events, with both taking place a short journey from where I live. I ran in the first, but my club had filled a team in the Harvester without me – meaning that I went along to support them and act as reserve. Prologue I had [...]
Having had a good run in the individual it was on to the relay competition, which was using the part of Culbin I had run on last year. For the relays I was running the middle leg in Mens Short. The first runner back helpfully warned all the waiting second leg runners that we would [...]
As I live in Reading I usually fly out of Heathrow or Gatwick airports. Both of these are busy airports and, often, flights are delayed and the queues long. To go to the British Orienteering Championships we were flying Bristol to Inverness. Both are small airports and it was so much easier and peaceful. I [...]
Last year I ran at Culbin and made a reasonable job of it, so it was with some confidence that I returned this year. For the individual we were running on a bit to the east of the one used last summer. I did not start too well. I allowed myself to be distracted by [...]
The new version of WordPress adds additional protection for cookies. It is very much worth adding the config option mentioned, since it helps protect against problems where a database have already been compromised. Hot on the heels of WordPress 2.5.0 is the security update – WP 2.5.1. Rumours that I have as many draft posts [...]
In between all the recent orienteering I have also helped at an event. Just after Easter my parents had agreed to plan and organise the BAOC event, which was held at Blandford Camp – on the training area. While I’ve run around the camp before, the bit we were using for this event is new [...]
I saw this meme going around the blog world and decided to join in. history | awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head Work 73 ls 63 svn 62 cd 56 make 48 vi 24 sudo 24 grep 17 acroread 15 ispell 9 ./repos-update.sh Home 57 vi [...]
Geir mentions that GitHub is live and that ‘Git is conquering the world‘. At this point I feel rather smug. I keep a repository of my own files on one of my machines. When I set up this repository, several years ago, I picked Subversion. However, recently the repository server has been offline and, so, [...]
The new version (2.5) of WordPress came out recently. Upgrading this blog went smoothly. The most noticeable change is the redesign to the admin section. It is certainly a big improvement on the old.
Qualifier Photos: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 My Route I had a slightly slow first control, while I struggled to locate exactly where I was and where I was going. After that I kept a good pace through the first half of the course, with only a small wobble [...]
Photos: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 My Route From waking up on Saturday morning I was never feeling too great and this was reflected in my run. While my navigation and route choice was ok, I never managed to get a decent pace going. For the first couple of controls my [...]
Photos 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 My Run I was running Mens Short this year. Due to child care arrangements I was going off in the mass start on first leg. I often struggle to get my pacing right in such situations and also struggle to get in contact [...]
Photos 1 – 2 My run My run here can be summed up quite easily. I was not in the right frame of mind and did not push myself. I should have run a lot faster, but never really got going. My route shows that my navigation was reasonably fine. I had two poor controls. [...]
Photos String Course My Run Like the sprint area, Leith Hill had also been used for the World Cup 2005 spectator races. I started at a good pace before missing control 4 and losing two minutes. For the next few controls I did not push myself and lost some time. I then made a mistake [...]
Photos Sprint: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 String Course and Tempo Sprint Prizegiving: 1 – 2 – 3 My Run At the World Cup spectator races, in 2005, I had a really good run around the University of Surrey [...]
Terry Pratchett is one of the best selling UK authors. During my teenage years his books were some of the few I read. Recently he announced that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Recently he pledged $1 million to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust. In response to this pledge a group of fans have created the site [...]
I have lived in Reading for five and a half years and often taken some notice of the local half marathon, but not too much. Last year, while in China (IIRC), I was talking with one of my colleagues and we came to the idea of running this year.
While I had run on many of the nearby hills before, this was my first trip to Holmbury Hill. The weather was sunny, but not too hot – rather good running weather. Sadly, I forgot to tape the back of my heels before running. I started well. I ran strongly for the first seven controls [...]
Today was a Military League (S) event at Ocknell. As with a large portion of the New Forest the area was rather wet in places. As I was helping with event setup and at the start I spent some of the time taking some photos and so, also, did my father. Photos page: 1 – [...]
The weather yesterday was sunny, but windy and we were far enough east that the rain did not arrive until after we had got home. Last time running on this area I slipped and injured myself. On looking at the control descriptions before going off it was clear that many of the courses shared several [...]
This week the event was close to home – about eight miles to travel. This meant that we were able to get up later than usual and did not have to rush. Rather pleasant, which is also a good description of the weather. The area was a forest with many minor roads cutting through, leading [...]
The first orienteering event for me this year and it was the club based competition – the Compass Sport Cup. Or rather Compass Sport Trophy, since Wimborne Orienteers are a ‘small’ club. Having been ill in the run up to this event I was not expecting to run too well, meaning that I expected to [...]
In a poor start to the year I went down with flu on the second day. I had arranged to run a 10k road race with a colleague, but had to give it a miss. Also the 10 mile race I had pencilled in for next month has had to be cancelled. Combined the means [...]
As the year draws to an end I looked through the lists of books read and orienteering event attended this year. While looking through the lists thoughts turned to favourites. Books Mad Dogs by Robert Muchamore – the latest book from a very good teenage spy series. The Financial Times Guide to Investing by Glen [...]
