Graham Gristwood

16 October 2006

Yesterday my club, Octavian Droobers, won the CompassSport Cup for the second year in a row. This is the most prestigious club competition in Britain, with a clubs qualifying for the final through regional rounds, and 25 runners to count in the final from a variety of age classes.

The picture above is club captain Alan Halliday collecting the trophy from Mr CompassSport, Nick Barrable. With him are course winners Jessica Halliday and Iain Embrey. Photo from Peter Guillaume.

The event was held at Greenham Common, an old RAF base, which was on the whole flat open grassland with pockets of contour detail and some areas of slightly more undulating woodland. There were several long legs which were just running across former airstrips. This meant that for the elite, the times were well under 5 minutes per kilometer. Craney won the elite, 10.2km in 47.15. I was 2nd in 48.42 - my race was a little scrappy and my legs felt tired after my long run on Saturday, but Craney beat me on almost every leg.

Results are available here

14 October 2006

University Challenge - orienteer style

Today I went to see the filming of 2 shows of University Challenge as my housemate Harold is on the Warwick University team. The show was filmed in Manchester and will be broadcast later in October - will put up show times when I know

Mountain marathon preparation

My next goal for this year is the B class at the OMM - the Original Mountain Marathon. This is a two day event at the end of October, basically a really long orienteering competition where you carry your camping and cooking kit. I am running it with my housemate Harold, and in preparation for the 5+ hours running each day, today we went up into the Peak District for a long run with our rucksacks. We wanted to test out the weight of our bags and kit, and get an idea about hydration and nutrition. We tested out a few energy bars and gels to see what we might want.

The competition in 28/29th October and is in Galloway in Southern Scotland. We are planning to take a camera to chronicle our weekend.