Glasgow 3 Parks

The 3 Parks Champs has moved to the summer and what a good decision that was ! No more sitting about in the freezing cold between races.

The first race this year was at Cathkin Braes which has been the site of many orienteering disasters. I headed out taking great care and this seemed to pay off with a pretty much error free run and a much better than expected ranking after the first round.

Race 2 moved on to Queens Park which should have been easy but I had a number or careless mistakes early on and then lost contact with the map twice in the middle of the course. Dropped several places down the rankings.

Race 3 was a Pollok Country Park and went very wrong in the forest section with an easy control taking 8 minutes of wandering around to locate.

All great fun but a poor performance in the end.

Portobello Park Run

I signed up for park runs about 5 years ago and finally managed to run my first event at Portobello. Max came along and we ran together for the first 4 km before I moved ahead for the last part of the race. Very nice weekly event which I should do more often.

New Trellis

Nice work !

Seven Sevens

A trip across to Northern Ireland for the British Champs long race. Nice to catch up with Maxwell and see him in much better shape after recent illness.

Sadly my right knee injury meant that I wasn't confident that I could make it round this long and brutal course. There was also a cut off at half way that I was very unlikely to make. I decided wisely just to climb to the top of Sleive Donard and see how I felt. A nice day for the race and some great views.

On the way back my knee was definitely feeling the worse for wear and it was definitely the right decision not to run.

Jupiter Artland

A family trip out to Jupiter Artland. Most of us had been once before but it was the first visit for Max. A very nice place with lots to see.

Two Inns Race

The second long race in the Scottish Championships. An interesting route from the Creaggan Inn to the Clachaig Inn near Glencoe. Lots of very remote hillside to traverse over generally rough and boggy ground with a few segments more rocky.

I set off very trepidatious with low expectations and hoping just to finish without embarrassing myself. I started slow and was in last place for around 20 minutes before starting to pass a few runners over the course of the next hour. The good news was that the legs held up well and I was able to finish feeling reasonably strong and able to run on the pathed bits of the last few kilometres. A really great race and was delighted to do well enough to get 2 championship points on the MV40 competition.

Running time was 4 hrs 58 minutes and came in 191% of the winning time.