JOK Chasing Sprint

The annual JOK chasing sprint was held in Edinburgh this year, so very accessible for me!  JOK had teamed up with EUOC, who put on their fantastic (and dare I say it, annual) street race on the Saturady, as part of their ‘Big Weekend‘.  I decided not to run the city race, I think it was this race last year where I started to have my injury problems as I ran very hard (and did quite well incidentally), then ran again the next day and came out with very sore calf muscles.  If interested, results of the 2010 city race are here, there were some epic route choices and it looks like a fantastic course, shame I couldn’t race it (I walked the short course with Tara)

After a fairly decent showing in the ESOC Sprint last week I thought I might be able to at least be part of a decent chase group and get a race out of it, turns out it wasn’t to be….  At least it was a lovely day, and a lot of the climb was removed with a hilly walk to the start:

The prologue started badly, I was very hesitant to #1 down the slope and never really regained any sort of speed, crap route choice to 2 and when coming out of it saw my James Lyne coming into it, he’d caught me 2 mins already! Arse.  I managed to stay ahead of him until number 7, where I made a silly error in staying too high and getting on the wrong side of the gorse, so I then had to fight my way back down, losing 45secs or so.  I was fairly clean after that, even when Spongey went flying past at number 10, though I was very slow and even walked some of it, here’s the map:

The chase started a lot better than the prologue, I was starting at the same time as Ross McLennan, but it turns out he wasn’t up for it after a tiring week of training and just jogged (and gave up?) so I passed him early on.  The first section comprised of 2 gaffled loops.  The map below makes sense if you look at the left bit first, then the right.  I got both loops pretty much bang on, my only problem was being slow on the uphills.  I managed to pass a couple of people in here, Duncan Grassie and Peter Helme (who I don’t know, just assuming from results) and then proceeded to totally and utterly cock up number 9.  I lost about 4.5 minutes, on Holyrood Park…  I was really being silly looking back, I went to the wrong cliff, too early, and then made the map fit.  The gorse was probably more passable than it was on the map and it made vague sense for where I should have been, so I stayed there, checking and double checking, being more and more stupid.  Meh, I wasn’t the only one there, 3 of us were looking for it, which probably compounded the problem.  Eventually I realised what I was doing and started heading for the real number 9 only to see Ollie O’Brien punching it, about 10/15 secs ahead of me.  I know I can run about the same speed as him, perhaps slightly faster so thought I might be able to catch him in the last section but my legs weren’t having any of it, booo. :/  Chase map(s):

All in all a pretty crap showing, only way is up, eh?!  Results can be found here.

Carlise next, on Saturday, as I’ve decided not to run any more this week and get myself back on the cross trainer.  Shins are hurting after these 2 runs and then running again on Monday night.