New Zealand

Photo: Mike Pedley

Better late than never! I travelled to New Zealand over Christmas and New Year to compete in the first World Cup races of 2013. They were held on the North Island, around Wellington and Hawke's Bay. I ran well (better than expected) to finish 13th and 19th in the 'forest' races, and 28th in the sprint (although I took it easy in a challenging final to protect my calf injury). A pleasing start to the year. I also took part in Sprint the Bay and some pre-oceania races with various levels of success.

I combined the racing with travelling around the North Island with my girlfriend, and I would say that in the 6 weeks we were there, we pretty much covered the whole island! We travelled round in a camper van, ran up a lot of mountains, ate a lot of good food, enjoyed the hospitality of the locals and generally enjoyed the climate and environment.

A selection of my photos are available here, and all my maps are available here
Results from World Cup and Sprint the Bay

I would like to say thank you to Vårdlänken Bemanning och Rekrytering and Infanta Ribbåtar for supporting me financially on this trip.

November

Things have been getting back to normal for me, I have started doing some decent milage in training, and even had a couple of good races just in time for the end of the season. I had a couple of weeks in the UK, including the GB team planning weekend, where I got in some nice training. Last weekend we had our annual club party, preceded by a long distance competition which was one of the most fun courses I have run all year. Maps below.

I also ran a couple of competitions in Tullinge (Kent Ohlsson's maps here and here), and yesterday I ran a nice training with some SNO boys (plus guests) - map up top.

Project2015

Athletes in the Great Britain orienteering team have launched a project aimed at preparing for WOC 2015 in Scotland and beyond. Check out the new site here, and see how you can support team GB!

Project2015

Hat trick in the hills

This weekend I flew back to England to take part in the UK Fell Running Relay Championships which were held on the Long Mynd in Shropshire by my club, Mercia Fellrunners. After many years of failure (some years close, some years not so close), we were desperate to finally win the coveted prize in home terrain. Mercia had never won before, but had thrown away winning positions several times, and been unlucky with star runners getting injured the day before (etc....), but we finally managed to get out a full strength team for the first time since I have been in the club (even if I was lacking some training mileage this year).

Paul Jones did a good job on 1st leg, handing over in 6th place, 1:30 back on the best rival team.  Steve Cale and Tim Davies did well on the long 2nd leg to pull up to 4th place (behind the other 3 favourite teams) about 1:45 behind the leaders. Then it was time for me and my partner, Andy Davies, to run. We had run together twice previously, in 2009 and 2010. Both times we had run the 3rd (navigation) leg, and both times we had won out leg convincingly. This time I was unsure of my physical shape, but was determined not to get dropped by Andy up the hill! We started fast, overhauling the 3rd team at the top of the first climb, and the front 2 teams were in sight in the distance. We ran strongly to the first checkpoint, and soon after 1 caught up the 2nd placed team. There was a route choice to the 2nd checkpoint, and we decided to take the left path option whilst the leading team ran straight through some rough heather. We made a gap of about a minute by the 2nd control over the 3 chasing teams, and then tried to push on around the flatter section of the race. The 3rd and 4th checkpoint were physically much easier, and the split times there were pretty close amongst the top teams. Contouring round to the 5th (and second last) control, we had just over a minute lead and were feeling confident. We picked up the tapes from the other legs to lead us the the checkpoint, but when we came to the hill top, there was no control! Confused, we ran on, but we had clearly been in the correct place. After a few meters we turned back to hunt again. We saw the 'marker' left by the course setter to indicate where the control should stand, but no control. By this time the 3 teams chasing had caught us. A consensus was reached that it was missing, so we all carried on. Andy and I managed to stay in front (just) on the steep descent to the finish, and sent out Simon Bailey (English champion this year) with a few seconds lead. Marshalls managed to get a checkpoint in place pretty quickly so it was only the first 4 teams (mostly us really) who were affected by the missing control.


Luckily, the minute or so that we lost was inconsequential as Simon ran the fastest leg time on 4th leg to win the 2012 relays for Mercia! Andy and I still managed to win the leg, and maintain our unbeaten record as a pair.

Leg 1,2 and 4 maps here
Results and splits here

Other news
I am now a Master of Sport and Exercise Science and have now graduated from Sheffield Hallam University, and I have been selected for the GB Performance team for 2012 and the World Cups in New Zealand in January.

Back in black

I made my comeback last weekend after a long recovery period, taking part in the SNO team at 25manna, a 25 person relay competition with people of all ages making up the team. Having not shown any form, I was lucky to make the first team, and had a relatively 'easy' leg and assignment, running leg 7 as the 2nd runner and having a comfortable lead over the 3rd and 4th members of our team (it gets complicated but 4 from each team run on each leg, with the 'best' starting last to catch up lost time).

I did a good race, with one 40 second mistake on the second last control, and a little time loss on the way to the first control when I hit my knee pretty hard on a stone. I was 2 minutes behind on my leg, and my team finished 3rd (after a pretty bad start).

Most positive was that my body responded in a good way, and despite not having a lot of recent training hours, I was able to run as I would have liked without any bad feeling or after effects. It is good to be back!

Results

Splits and maps etc