Owls Count

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 and my navigation was good - with the exception of 2, where I took a detour through the string course. At this point I started having problems with my heels - with the shoes rubbing. This problem caused me to slow down and also I allowed it to distract me.

I lost two minutes at both 8 and 11. One of these was due to miscounting paths. Then, from 16 onwards I was fairly slow - basically walking the last part of the course. I should have been at least ten minutes quicker.

The finish was placed downwind from the barbecue, being run by the Peaslake School. Obviously I stopped off to eat a burger!

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 - 2. The photos were taken with two cameras - I was testing my mother’s camera. No real action shots though.

I went out on the A course. For the first part I ran fairly well - keeping up a good pace through the terrain. However, I messed up number 14 where I just missed the control and misread the map. After this I did not manage to get back into a decent pace and lost six, or so, minutes on the last part of the course.

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 legs - meaning that there would be a lot of people running in the same direction. This was how it proved to be - I always seemed to be in a group. I intend to put my route up at some stage, but when trying to draw it last night I could not remember where I went on a couple of the legs. (Edit: my route.)

Overall my run was ok, but not great. Several small mistakes, nothing too big, and for parts of the course I allowed my pace to drop. The more noticeable mistakes were in the first half of the course. At number 3 I missed a path and then allowed myself to be distracted by some others; at 7 I picked a stupid route when I misread the paths and ended up heading off in the wrong direction for a bit, losing a couple of minutes; and coming out of eight I headed in the wrong direction, meaning a longer path run, which added another couple of minutes to my time.

On leaving the event I was reading SINS - the Southwest Intraregional News Sheet - and realised that I was M21V Southern Champion last year and that I had not even realised. I ran M21S yesterday, which means I did not defend my title.