Owls Count

Three events in Wiltshire. Nice and close to my parents place, so only a little travelling for me over the weekend

BEOC Middle - Fonthill
(29th April)

Running a classic length elite course is simply far too far for me. This means that when a middle, or sprint, event comes around I take the option of ‘running up’ and testing myself against the elite competitors. My aim was to be within double the winners time, which I managed by a few seconds. I would also have liked to finish within an hour, but was never moving quickly enough to manage this.

Generally my navigation was ok. Heading to number two I hesitated for a few seconds trying to decide if the field, which was clearly going to be the fastest route, was out of bounds - I am sure it has been at previous events, but was not this time and so I ended up going through it. On the long leg, I should have been more decisive and not have been distracted by other runners.

Photos from this event are here.

National - Stourhead
(30th April)
The courses for this event had to be replanned at the last minute, when it was discovered that they had been planned on the wrong scale event. Something any of us planning an event will do well to remember and check.

The forest is fairly tough going - giving fairly short courses. As I had chosen to run short at this event it meant that I was only going a little further than on the previous day!

The early part of the course I ran well and picked fairly good routes. Especially on number four, where I avoided a lot of unnecessary climb by taking a longer path run round a couple of hills. Sadly I did not continue this thinking to the later long leg, where I went straight up and over - taking at least five minutes longer than I should have done. I also stood for a while trying to find the control in the ditch half way up a hill - like a lot of other people around me!

I was a couple of minutes over my target time of 90 minutes. Mostly of the time was lost in the long leg and the last couple of legs, where I was fairly tired and moving slowly.

Harris Relays - Gaer Hill
(1st May)
Ran in the Mens Supervet class, in a non-competitive (obviously!) team with my parents. Harris relay events combine a core set of controls (spine), which all team members must visit, and an extra set of controls, which must be visited by at least one member of the team. Thus, they are characterised by the lack of charging off the start line, as the teams open the maps and plan how to split up the extra controls - with the planning being vital to get a good split and have all the team finish at about the same time.

In our team we made a plan, started to move and then changed a few around. The split we made was fairly good and we would have finished fairly closely if I had not made a five minute error on one control - I just ran straight past!

Overall my run was reasonable, except for the five minute mistake. Generally the area was fairly reasonable to run on and I enjoyed the event - just a shame that more teams had not entered.

Photos from this event are here.