First Track Races

I ran my first ever track races on Saturday at Western University (London). My first races was the 1500 m (4:32.5 mins) followed by the 3000 m later in the day (9:47.7 mins).

RESULTS

I was pretty slow compared to the leaders (4:09 and 8:37) but was reasonably pleased. If I hadn't been last and there was someone pushing me, or I'd had a watch on, I could have got my target times of 4:30 and 9:45 (3 min and 3:15 min kilometres).

I haven't made the track team with those results but I can still train with the middle distance/XC group, and maybe run track again at the more local races; the next couple are Windsor and Montreal so only the actual team will go. It will be quite nice not to have the commitment of regular competition next term. If any are open competitions not that far away I might enter myself as Warwick University, I enjoyed the races more than I expected.

Toronto

No racing this weekend so I went to visit my cousin in Toronto. She goes to university there.

There was a Christmas Parade this weekend. A bit early I know! The decorations are already up and lit in towns here.

Raid the Hammer Adventure Run

http://www.dontgetlost.ca/

I ran a 10 km adventure run today (a little more than 10 km I think) near Hamilton, the Raid the Hammer hosted by Golden Horseshoe Orienteers.

The main event was 25 km but I ran with two pretty quick juniors (14 and 16) to make up at junior team, and we were first to finish on the 10 km beating the seniors that entered. 1hr 44mins 03 secs.

Golden Horseshoe Orienteering Club, 2007

It was a navigational event on a 1:20000 custom map, with contour removal in places to hide some steep river valleys that had to be crossed out of the start and into the finish. I was doing most of the navigating and messed the first checkpoint but we made up time and were the 2nd team to checkpoint 2, with the leaders being on the 25 km course that branched off at number 4.

The 10 km was more aimed at people new to orienteering/adventure running (Britain take note, call orienteering events adventure runs and randoms turn up!) so didn't include the Matrix score elements or the follow the line from 4 to 6, and didn't have the second 1:10000 contours only map featuring E=mc² (effort = mud x climb x climb). Considering the age of my team-mates I was pretty impressed, the last part in big river valleys was tough going.

It is the sort of race that I think could work well near University at home and I might try to put on sometime. Connect up a lot of parks and have sprint sections connected by trail sections.

And I went LaserQuest-ing yesterday for a birthday party, and came second :)
It was fun.

US Champs - how can I be so bad?

I travelled over 10 hours to Virginia to compete in the US Orienteering Champs at the weekend, and did really badly.
I just couldn't seem to navigate correctly on the terrain, contour details seemed vague and it was nasty green everywhere. I retired for the first time ever on Saturday after being out for 2.5hrs and only completing half the course, it was still over 5km back to assembly from where I gave up. Sunday was better (map below) and I finished 11.2 km in 1:54 hrs, mainly down to one stupid mistake (> 10 mins) part way round and then getting too tired at the end.

maps.google.com

Prince William Forest Park, Quantico Orienteering

I enjoyed Sunday's course much more, despite overlap with the previous day's terrain. Either I'd learned something from Saturday or I preferred the planning style but I was able to plan a proper route on it (seemed more options for using the larger re-entrants rather than having to cross lots of vague ones) for most controls.

US Champs website

Trick or Treat