And the dawn gives me a shadow I know to be taller.....
That's how a great weekend makes me feel.
Nice innit :-)
Goodness! You say, what did you do? Oh alright then I'll tell ya.
We know what Saturday was, yes yes, parkrun of course. A solid run I guess, 22.14. Started well, faded a fair bit but not too much cos Vicky was running :-D.
Then home to rest! Why? Well cos at 8.30pm I was being picked up to go do the Roding Rally. An 8 hour orienteering event where me and my team (Jen, Gary and Matt) had to find up to 10 checkpoints in Epping Forest using a map, grid refs and cryptic clues.
Simple!
I'd like to state that the problems we had finding the start were because it is so dark in the country side. Ok.
Went to register and, I'm not being funny or anything but certain pass times do seem to attract erm, ah, special people :-D don't worry I will happily include me in that. I got our card and set of instructions and purchased a see through ruler thingy. When I called it that the woman at the desk looked at me like I was bacteria. Which made me giggle. I suspect she wished me dead in the woods, something that actually could happen.
Anyway, loads of groups were huddled outside registration marking their maps with highlighters and one guy waved his map all marked up at us and said 'wanna look? Ha, well you can't' the words tosser and prick immediately came to mind.
Anyway being new at all this, our group decided to work out the first clue and set off just to check we could do it. We sussed which ref it was and set off. Not too far away, and pretty much thought we'd found it straight away. What in fact we had found was lots of other groups all blundering round the woods looking for what turned out to be a one man tent in a small clearing :) still we w we pleased to have got one.
All the rest were unlit but bigger tents, still really hard to find in the dark if you didn't head into the woods in exactly the right place.
We learned that distance and perceived distance bear no relation to each other, it's very easy to go in circles endlessly, cryptic clues are really fucking annoying when you are tired, upturned trees disguise themselves as tents and you must turn off your head torch when going for a wee.
We found 5 cps out of ten. We must have passed a sixth many times but just couldn't find it, we got lost once (4.30am) and had to give up on a couple to make it back in time to be counted.
Once back we had breakfast in the village hall and sat around for a while. Me, Jen and Gary were all due at xc at 10. With a bit too much time to kill we all went home and so it turned out I had about an hour and a half to shower and sort myself out..... So I sat on the sofa gazing into space and went to xc dirty!
I didn't have much enthusiasm I will admit. Walking 15 miles overnight and no sleep do not make for a great performance at a tough xc. Still I had shiny new spikes to try so I had to give it a shot.
The first mile I hated. Too busy, too much concentration on foot placement required. Then it gets into the hills proper and this is better, if harder. At about 3 miles I realise there are people ahead who shouldn't be. So I try to pick it up and am pleased to find I can. The last mile is the first one I hated again so I use this to fuel me and overtake 6 women, picking them off to keep me going. I finish happy that I have done all I could :) and we have enough women counters to score.
Next time I will be faster and I will beat more women (this league we all go off together at the same time, men and women).
Now it feels like every bit of footwear I have is caked in mud, but that will come off. And I'm going on holiday. Yay!!!!!
Back Friday though, and Chelmsford 10k on Sunday.
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