I’m extremely pleased to have been chosen for this volunteer role, ever since the initial conception of the bid I have been very keen to get involved. I was the IT manager for the Park World Tour event we hosted in Perth in 2010 and it was this that gave me a flavour of what’s involved in an event on the international stage. The World Champs may never come back to Scotland, even the UK, so I felt that now was by far the best opportunity to get involved and deliver a fantastic orienteering spectacle.

This role is most definitely not a one man show and it is also not just one event, there will be a series of events over the next 3 years in the lead up to the World Champs in August 2015. We haven’t worked out the full details yet but the plan will be to have someone in charge of each section of my remit who I will work with me in order to shape WOC into what it needs (deserves?) to be. I’m really looking forward to the challenge and finding an enthusiastic, skilled team is my first priority. So if you have an interest or aptitude for any Orienteering related IT, and the enthusiasm to deliver a fantastic WOC then please get in touch.

Exciting times ahead for Orienteering IT in the UK!

I hadn’t set myself any goals for the weekend other than to try and run as cleanly as possible and see what I could do. I won’t bore anyone with race details, if you really want to read about my races in more detail, they’re on my attackpoint log.

Sprint – Livingston

The weekend started on a dreary Friday lunchtime in Livingston, who had pulled out all the stops to welcome us to their fair city, the signs were an especially nice touch:

Picture from Terry Johnstone

I came a very mediocre joint 69th after having a few wobbles, at least it’s top half but I am capable of more. A bit sad to be 1 second behind fellow ESOC member Andrew Lindsay, although at the JK Sprint last year I beat him by 1sec so a fair trade! I definitely need to invest in a pair of trail shoes to cope with wet pavement and wet grass. I’m glad I ran in trainers rather than flats!

I also recorded this race with my headcam, it was a bit damp though!

Middle – Dunalastair (WRE)

I felt a bit naked at Dunalastair running without my GPS on for the first time in ages. You aren’t allowed to use GPS devices with a screen in WREs (World Ranking Event).  I had a fairly decent race, losing time here and there but nothing major to give me another mediocre result of 69th. I lost 2 mins at number 4 because of a dodgy bit of vegetation boundary mapping. I was cursing at the time but I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. Most of the top guys had realised by this point that the vegetation wasn’t perfect so they were going on contours and compass. I need to work on using my compass as I often neglect it, especially in thicker forest. My result gave me a start time of 11.30 in the long race, thankfully not too early!

Long – Craig a’Barns

This was the big one, I knew the area was going to be physical but I wasn’t quite expecting it to be as tough as it was. I had happily predicted a sub-80 winning time and that I would be in under 2 hours. Not to be! Doug Tullie won it with an excellent race in 87.57, just a couple of mins under the estimated winning time, and only just ahead of Scott Fraser who won overall after his awesome run at Dunalastair. I was a bit further back in 128.25, which was enough for a reasonable 31st place. It’s a lot higher than the previous two days because all the juniors run little short courses while we old men get to slog it out over the full distance. I didn’t have a clean race, but not horrific. I lost a lot of time in the far north section (6+ mins) where I, again, failed to follow my compass through the thick forest.  Thankfully my run was good enough to put me near the front of the ‘punter elite’ pack, which was nice. I finished 33rd overall in M21Elite (doesn’t include the sprint) which I am happy with as I know I have things to work on!

I helped a bit after my run (we ‘elites’ had been left off the helper list so had no specific job – this was the ESOC day) but was glad to not have much to do. At 7 there was a meeting about the World Champs in 2015, which I am going to play a part in the organisation for (I should really write a post about it). By the time I got back to our accommodation at 9pm I was shattered and worrying about how I was going to cope with 40+ mins of hilly running at 10am the next day…

Relay – Newtyle Hill

We were never going to challenge the big boys in the JK Trophy class so there was no pressure to go and do anything amazing. Again my focus was to try to stay as clean with the navigation as possible and see what the legs would do. I really struggled physically but enjoyed it immensely. I had a few tussles and was rarely far away from anyone else, something you only really get in a relay first leg!

I came back in 32nd place and the lads, Craig and Andrew managed to maintain the position (Craig gained a bit, Andrew lost a few places) for 32nd overall. Perhaps next time we should pot hunt on the short? Some of Andrew and Craig’s Scottish Juniors team mates were 2nd in the men’s short and we could have beaten them

I also recorded this race:

All in all a really fun weekend!

The weekend of 17/18 of March saw the first of race of the 2012 Scottish Orienteering League on the same area used for Day 4 of the Scottish 6 Days last year which I didn’t get to run, although I did spend the day in the soggy assembly field. Thankfully the weather was a lot more pleasant this time round! But first, Andy Paterson of Clyde had planned a middle distance race nearby for the Saturday…

Coille Nathais Middle Race, 17/03/12

Middle distance races have always been a problem for me; I tend to get flustered, run too fast and make lots of mistakes. So I was pretty determined to avoid it this time, especially as it was probably my last chance before the JK to do a middle race. Thankfully I managed to keep my cool and despite some wobbles early on I had a pretty clean race.

Results

I also recorded a headcam video of this race:

Torinturk Scottish League Race, 18/03/12

Sunday brought the main event, the Long race. Given some leg niggles last week I was a bit apprehensive of a full on hilly race but it turned out to be ok. I felt a bit lacking in energy and power in my right leg but not too bad.  I made some big mistakes early on, losing 5 minutes on number 4 was a particularly bad one. The forest around there was vague and my plan was even more vague. I should have followed the line of crags but went low, got confused and had to relocate a couple of times… Oops. The rest of the course was a bit of a plod but great to get some time in terrain before the JK.

Results

Sunday – Nopesport Urban League

Right, this the race I’d been looking forward to. In 2010 I had jogged round the short course as I was recovering from an injury so I was excited to be racing in St Andrews (where I went to Uni) again.  I had agreed to run late as I was helping on the IT systems again and ended up being the last starter. Sunday up until then had been considerably more chilled than the day before so I was ready to rock.

I had a very good run. Probably lost some time on the long leg (3) by going left instead of right but most of this was likely down to leg speed. I had a few other sub-optimal route choices but was always in control and had planned ahead. A very pleasing race! You can see the map here.

I ended up 5th, just 3 mins behind Ross McLennan (Oleg about a min quicker but missed a control out). Given Ross’ 10k pb is 6mins quicker than mine, and this race was about 9.7k, I am very happy with this result

For anyone who is interested, I filmed the whole thing… enjoy!

Saturday – Scottish Sprint Championships

Saturday didn’t start particularly well; we arrived at 8.30 to find the sports centre shut and the lady inside telling us it opened at 9. Ok, can cope with that. At 9, get let into the building but she won’t open the back door which we’d booked. Also hasn’t heard of orienteering (‘oh, you’re not the archery club?’). huh? So I basically just asked her to open the door then wandered off to set up. (the planner, who’d arranged it, turned up later and sorted it out)

Anyway, this meant I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when it came to running! The first race went reasonably well, a few minor wobbles and a few curses at controls that were fast asleep but reasonably well raced. I ended up 12th in the first race which was ok.

The gap in between races went pretty well. A few minor dramas with the start list production but nothing serious. The problem came as I was going into the start pen when someone said there was a problem with download. I’m sure they’ll be fine I say, but then thinking about it. The race itself was ok, big mistake on 8 lost me 30 secs – I took a tumble on the way to 5 and wasn’t focused going through 6 and 7 then read a 3 as an 8 and found myself back at 3. Oops. This meant my 30sec man, Rob Kelly, caught me. I then put the boot in and really focused, and was very clean on the rest of the course to actually make those 30 secs back (he made a mistake though). Anyway, it was all to be in vain… At download afterwards Lesley Ward rocks up and says ‘I’d like to DSQ myself for crossing some out of bounds’, then points at the map. I have a closer look… ‘arse, I crossed that too’. So yes, DSQ, lovely. In the end there were about 10 people disqualified for that particular bit of oob, which looked like a path on the ground. Not my best day.

ESOC Site with results, routegadget etc.

I was running the brown course (Open Men basically) and knew with a good run I could possibly sneak the 100 points for the win which would have helped as us fast ‘young men’ are not a strong point in ESOC. I actually had a fairly inconsistent run. Loads of mistakes in the circle cost me lots of time. Looking at the Overall Results I should have been more than capable of being around the same time as Roger Goddard. Because there are two competitions in points for the Brown Cup course I would have been very happy with 2nd (no idea who this Felix chap is, he’s quite fast) but am much less happy with 6th.

I videod the whole thing, again trying to play with my new headcam to try and figure it out. Bonus points if you watch it all

The good thing is that we qualified! It was a very very close thing with only a few points between ourselves and MAROC. A bit of recalculation shows that the result could have been very very different very very easily. We will see all those pesky English teams in the final!

As the angle the camera needs to be at isn’t something I’ve perfected yet I decided not to upload any files that were too large, so the quality isn’t great. Thankfully attackpoint has a really great feature of being able to link your gps data to both a youtube video and a QuickRoute map which then gets overlaid onto Google Earth. You can see this for the ESOC Sprint O here: Prologue and Chase

The other thing I experimented with was the nifty bit of software Jarkko (of Routegadget fame) wrote to combine the video with a map overlay. I definitely didn’t get the config quite right but as it takes time to process I didn’t want to do it all again with such a rubbish quality video. It also makes use of a VirtualDub plugin called Deshaker to remove the shakiness of the video at the expense of adding a black border that wobbles about. I think it makes it much more viewable but it’ll be way more effective when I get a better camera angle.

I really just bought this as a toy and something to analyse my orienteering. I can think of a view other uses though.. I’d like to create some sort of promotional video (who for, I don’t know, ESOC?) with filming from the St Andrews weekend. I’m also keen to try out the WiFi addon for it that comes out later this year. Live streaming to the arena at O races, anyone?

In other news I set a new 5k PB at the Edinburgh parkrun last week, 18.59. Not super fast but definitely something to step forward from, especially as I now have a place in the Great North Run in September to look forward to!

This month has left me quite tired, but in a good way. I feel like my body is much happier to have done some training rather than trying to compete on very little. As you can see from the image above (or my actual log) the last 31 days I’ve run over 280km and trained for a total of nearly 35 hours. This is more than I’ve ever done in a month (well, ok, apart from July 2009 but that was mostly cycling to work and a one off adventure race) and it will have paved the way for a much more consistent year which was always the ultimate goal. I was a little worried I was going to end up doing too much but I think I’m ok with what I’ve done. Some of the big boys do a hell of a lot more but I’ll be happy if I can do a consistent set of decent training.

I don’t think it is worth trying to keep up running every day as forcing myself out at 10pm a couple of times after a long day of non-running isn’t really helpful, that time will be better used to rest. What I will do is stick to my routine, leaving my bag at work to go to intervals on a Tuesday night then jogging in on Wednesday morning has worked very well (even with a circuits session on Wed evening!) as has running home from work if I don’t have any other session on. The one thing I need to add is a hill rep session, sorely lacking at the moment and will help my speed in terrain tremendously.

My aims for the year, I hear you ask? I’d like to do well at the JK on home turf and the Scottish Champs (i.e. no break down this year) as well as trying to attend all the local-ish Urban races as they’re ace. I also want to do some road running, a decent half marathon time as well as consistent 5km time improvement at the Parkrun event.

After a couple of years of crappy training caused by some little niggly injuries I’ve decided it’s time to do something about it. So I’ve started doing the whole new year resolution thing this year, the main one being to do more running (and more strength work in order to stay injury free). I went for a run with a few guys on the 1st and my mate Al was saying he was considering doing the ‘January Challenge’ of running every day in January, so I said I’d consider it. That evening I thought ‘why not?’ and decided to go for it. I have one rule, each run needs to be at least 25mins or 5km as a minimum whichever comes first. Nearly had a problem on the 3rd because of the horrible wind but by the time I was running home from work it had died down. Yesterday was tough because I didn’t have an easy journey I could replace with a run and Tara and I were busy all day, but I managed to get out at 10pm for 35mins! It’s been going really well though and I’m pleased to have reached half way.

My Attackpoint Log (which is a training logging site tailored towards orienteers) is where I log all my sporting activity. Only half way through the month I have almost done more training than any other month since 2009. I am obviously conscious about over training but am trying to stay well within my limits at the moment with an aim to step up the mileage a bit in February, especially as I’ll have got over the worst of my current niggles by then!

As well as doing well in a few of the big Orienteering events this year I have plans to run some PBs in 5k, 10k and half marathon, we’ll see how that goes…

Onwards and upwards

Saturday at Erskine was great fun, lovely weather with some tricky navigation. I had a pretty decent run and finished 7th on Course 1.  I really enjoy urban races!  Felt pretty good despite a busy week at work and only had a few small wobbles.  The GPS trace isn’t very accurate, ‘cough’.

Nopesport Urban League race in Erskine, click for big image.

Sunday, today, wasn’t such a good outing for me.  Was wearing a shiny new pair of swoops and they were causing my feet to get rubbishy blisters.  Started hurting on the way to 12 and just after punching stopped for a minute or so to see if it was a rock in my shoe but alas it was not  Hobbled/walked/grumbled round the rest.

SOL2 @ Polmaise and Sauchie, click to get bigger image.

Not sure why I didn’t but was tempted to go straight from 17 to 23 (as Spongey did I think) but thought that was a bit of a wimp out so plodded the rest anyway, not especially enjoyable despite the nice(ish) forest and good planning.  Meh, I think I need to tape my feet for every run for a while yet… Results on fvo.org.uk Bit sad to be beaten by Mark by 3 secs (!) but he ran on the run in and I couldn’t really be bothered!

Results for both are on the NATO website.

Yesterday I ran the Men’s course, it was a good test of navigation while being able to run fast, and a maze.  The maze was a bit annoying as we had been told not to cross anything that was taped, but one of the open bits on the map was taped! Bit of a controller/planner fail there, but otherwise enjoyable.  I came 24th, behind Andrew L again, going to have to do something about that!

Leazes Park Sprint (forgot GPS)

Today I ran the M21E course (prima donna!).  Had a good run with only an annoying route choice error at 7 and a few little wobbles elsewhere. On leaving the field I was not surprisingly last (4/4) but that was always going to be the case.

M21E plus route