End of the First Term

Term 1 is over, and I'm at home in England for Christmas at the moment. I got my results a few days ago, averaging 86% which I am very pleased with, with all modules above 80%.

My first time in Canada has been fun. I've enjoyed being part of the cross-country team, live with decent people and got on with my course mates. All engineers at Waterloo do co-op degrees meaning they spend a term at uni, then go work for a term, so my course mates will be all different next term.

The teaching at Waterloo has been mainly good, one lecturer was very poor (bad level of English) but that could, and does, happen anywhere. The weekly tutorial slot was used differently by each module. Some using it to go over problems, others to summarise the previous week's work, and the civil module used it as a bonus lecture period. Tutorials were in groups of 30 but typically only 10 turned up so you could get the TA (teaching assistant, a post-grad student) to go over whatever you needed help with and I think are a good idea to aid learning.
Something I like over Warwick was a high-level of assessed work. The civil course had weekly marked assignments, the others had much more marked lab/project work than at Warwick. combined with mid-term and end-of-term exams I much prefer this system than just a little assessed coursework and a big exam in June. It means I get nice Christmas holiday with no work or revision, the first since pre-GCSE. The module exams were typically 55-60% final, 25-30% mid-term and 10-20% coursework.

I've selected my courses for next term, much easier this time since I have a better idea of how the system works and how module level is indicated. Lectures begin on the 7th January and I fly back on the 3rd, spending a few days with my cousins in Sarnia before heading back to uni.

So far I'm glad I went on this exchange, it's been a change, but it will be nice to get back to Warwick next year.

Thomass Winter Series

Today I ran at the second race of the Thomass winter orienteering series, held annually in Ontario. This is a handicapped race with a score element where you miss out controls depending on your age/sex point score. My age wouldn't normally let me miss anything but with it being my first ever Thomass I was able to miss one control.
The rest of the course was a normal 4 km loop in a nice wood. Also, depending on your handicap you started a different distance from the start kite in the mass start, with old ladies about 300m away and M21 1.4 km away, I started about 1.2 km away.

After the start kite was the score element, so I skipped the control 35 m down a steep escarpment that I would have just had to climb straight back up again. After completing this I'd already picked off most people who started infront of me and missed out more but I got the rest soon after. I made a mistake at number 4, not reading the slope direction correctly, and the M21 people caught me. A big train to number 7 but the leader made a mistake at 8 and I slipped away with two other people. It was only 1 km to the finish so a proper race, I beat one of them but couldn't get past the other so finished second.

Golden Horseshoe Orienteering Club - www.dontgetlost.ca

I enjoyed it, and think it is a really good format for small informal races since it joins the entire field to give more competition. There was a few inches of snow on the ground.

I played some Canadian Football (slightly different rules to American) on Friday night in the snow, it was actually quite fun. I scored a touchdown :)

More Snow

It snowed a lot last night...

Waterloo Santa Shuffle

I ran a 5 km race in a local park today with some of the XC team. There weren't many other serious runners there (national XC champs the same day quite near by) and I came second, being beaten by one of my team mates. With a time of 16:20 mins, over snow covered tracks and very slippy boardwalk, I think it was a bit short of 5 km.
There were a lot of family groups and younger kids running, the race was for the Salvation Army, and people commented that we seemed a bit serious when we were all doing a proper warm-up in our matching team kit. The Waterloo XC girls got a one-two-three.

If there ever are any results then they should be on the Running Room website.

There has been a full week of snow now, it has melted a bit today in the Sun, and it's seriously cold. Just over a month ago I was still wearing shorts and t-shirt!

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.