I will not run again this year! The 4.8 miles this morning brought me up to 1232 for the year. There is a temptation to go out and run the extra couple of miles needed to make that 1234 miles for the year, but I will resist. Positives for the year I completed my first [...]
So, it comes to that point in the year when I review my reading for the year. Over a hundred books read this year! I expect that I will not manage as many next year. Non-fiction Books of the Year In a category with very few entries it is a tie between Six Degrees: Our [...]
Boxing Day saw my orienteering club’s annual Boxing Day Canter. I had not attended last year, due to illness, but was healthy for it this year. The format is an hour long score event – collect as many control sites as you can in the time. This is a very good way to run off [...]
I’ve run fairly well this year but there was a gap in my results – I had not set a 5k PB. I had raced the distance several times, but none had produced a PB. The two parkrun courses that I run (Reading and Basingstoke) are slower at this time of year, so I decided [...]
The courses used a section of Oxford that I know well. The map could be used to detail where I spent a good portion of my time while a student at the university. I’ve not bothered to draw my route in, but there is a Garmin track showing where I went. Or showing where the [...]
This morning I ran the Henley Half Marathon. The weather was good – cool and no rain, though it was fairly windy. A couple of weeks ago I got a Garmin 305 and decided to use this to monitor my pace as I went along. This means that there is a Garmin Connect run information [...]
On Saturday afternoon I went along to the Berkshire Fetch Everyone Mile. This is an event organised through the Fetch Everyone website and gives an opportunity for people to meet up, have a run, eat some cake, and talk about running. My aim was to take at least one second off my PB, though I [...]
Parkruns are weekly, free, timed, 5k runs. I have been to the Basingstoke parkrun several times and run the Brahmall Park and Leeds Hyde Park ones as well. Last week one started in Reading. As I was in London last week I could not make the first one, but went along yesterday. The Reading parkrun [...]
The event last year was good , this year was better. The courses started just north of St Paul’s and covered a nice section of central London, as can be seen from my route. I started well – running fast and navigating well, which may explain the three minutes I wasted going to the fifth [...]
This year I went to Switzerland for my holiday and took part in the Swiss Orienteering Week.
This could easily be titled: ‘A good run with a friend.’ I am off on holiday in a few days – six days of orienteering in Switzerland – so I did not want to overdo it today. I had a vague plan of starting at nine minute miles and speeding up in the second half [...]
This morning I graduated. I am really glad that the hotter weather of earlier in the week had relented, making the wearing of a suit and robes much more bearable. The combination of a surname starting with a letter early in the alphabet and my degree meant that I was the first person to be [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
On Saturday I went to Basingstoke to run a 5k and then onto a track near Newbury to run a mile. Rather a good combination for the day and making good use of the fine weather we have been having recently. Basingstoke Parkrun Before this race I could not decide how fast to run. I [...]
Yesterday evening saw another race – a trip out to Bracknell Forest for a five mile race. Last week I had had a hectic day before racing, but this week was more relaxed. Sadly, my legs felt tired during my warm up. I started slowly and then picked up to a reasonable pace in the [...]
On Wednesday evening I went to the first of the Yateley 10k races. I was going with a friend and we both had hectic days and little chance to think about the race until we were driving across. The race centre organisation was good. I had no wait to pick up my number/chip, get a [...]
It seems to be 10k season at the moment and, maybe, I will run this distance well at some point. Certainly Sunday was not a well paced effort and slower than I wanted to go. When I woke up it was nice and sunny, but the clouds quickly came over and it started tipping it [...]
Part two of my weekend saw a trip to The National Forest. I really did not help myself for this race, as I forgot to take any hay fever medication and was struggling due to this the whole time I was out running. That does not explain my poor route choice in place though. That [...]
This past weekend saw one of my favourite events for the year – the British Elite Sprint Orienteering Championships. This year the event was held at The University of Nottingham – somewhere I had not been before. As I have family in that part of the world I combined visiting them with the orienteering and [...]
An ok run. I was not going flat out, as I did not feel too well, and was a minute or so behind my PB. Well done to R for keeping me company when it looked like he could run faster and for him still managing to take a few minutes off his PB. I’ll [...]
Yesterday I ran a quarter marathon – which is about 500m longer than a 10k. It was a good day to be out running. The first part of this race is over two miles along the seafront, starting at Boscombe pier. These two miles seem to go on for ever, with the sea on the [...]
I knew, from my recent 10 mile races, that I had the opportunity to take several minutes off my PB and that a time of 1:35 was possible. However, I also knew that it would require hard work towards the end – I have done very few runs of over 10 miles this year. So [...]
I had not been intended to go to Basingstoke this morning but I woke up early and decided last minute to make the trip. When I set off from home it was fairly chilly, but the sun soon got to work and by the time I arrived it was nice temperature. I took the first [...]
Two PBs this weekend – one for mum and one for me. Basingstoke parkrun On Saturday I travelled down to Basingstoke, where I met with my parents. Mum had decided it was time for an attack on her 5k PB and, with me running Salisbury 10 the next day, I decided to run with her. [...]
This past weekend I travelled to Basingstoke to run the parkrun 5k and then onto the New Forest for the British Relay Orienteering Championships. Basingstoke parkrun I had a reasonable run and finished in 20:52. This adds to the bulk of my 5k results, where I have now five times between 20:47 and 20:55. This [...]
On Sunday I ran the Southern Championships at Burnham Beeches and Egypt Woods. Since I am racing on four consecutive weekends I planned to treat this as a training run and not go full out. This would then allow me to run in a new pair of shoes – Inov-8 X-Talon 212. However, on starting [...]
On Saturday I raced the JOK Chasing Sprint at Whippendell Wood. Prologue I could tell that I have not done much orienteering recently and my route shows the silly mistakes I made. On the first control I managed to lose two minutes and end up in the wrong block of forest. I am still unsure [...]
I had been really struggling to decide on a race plan for the Bramley 10. I am only just back to full training after my marathon last month. I have had a few confidence building training runs in the past week and decided to aim for as close to 75 minutes as possible, with a [...]
WordPress 2.7.1 was released yesterday. One of the new features in WordPress 2.7 was an easier upgrade method. If all works correctly you just click the ‘Upgrade’ button and it does all the work for you. The feature worked, for me, as advertised and within a minute the upgrade was complete. I really approve of [...]
Running on fresh snow is great – before the snow has time to turn to ice it is not slippery and all you have to do is watch out for covered trip hazards. I ran 3.6 miles this morning – making sure that I was very well wrapped up against the cold before going out. [...]
This past weekend I travelled to Edinburgh for the Edinburgh University Orienteering Club’s Big Weekend – a weekend of orienteering and a Burn’s night celebration.
In my previous post I talked about running the Walt Disney World Marathon. Obviously, I did more than just the marathon in my time away. In this post I talk about the rest of my trip.
Last week I travelled over to Florida. My main reason for going was to run in the Walt Disney World Marathon.
