Training Log Archive: O Joy

Event: London City Race
 

The City of London Race was hosted by the South London Orienteers (SLOW) and was held in the Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs area of London. Canary Wharf has apparently undergone a huge transformation in the past decade or so and is now filled with huge modern office buildings built among many canals. Ilse of Dogs is more residential with rows of flats and parks, one with a zoo, and lies between Canary Wharf and the Thames with Greenwich on the south side of the river. The start was just below the West India Quay DLR platform which gave a great view of the start but not many clues about the first control. Throughout the day, I gained an appreciation of the "maritime-ness" of London.

The Canary Wharf section was fairly straight-forward with most of the controls on obvious levels of the streetscape. Control 4, however, was on a bridge over a small canal about 15 feet below street level, the elevation of which wasn't easily seen on a map with 2.5 m contours. The final part of the route to the control was even further obscured by a city works truck "cleaning the street" just above the control location such that you couldn't get close enough to peer over the side of the wall and see the control. As I was running past the truck with the "workers" watching the runners, I thought to myself, what are they doing here on a Sunday morning right in front of that control. It took me a couple of days to realize that they were probably there at the behest of the course planner to "enhance" the urban atmosphere. The area had some route choice problems in deciding how to get across the canals and around the buildings.

Control 11 to 12 was a long leg (1.2 km) that definitely favoured the road runners, as did most of the race. Rather than taking the simple two-step approach after the bridge (which provided a cool view of sailboats on the canal in the middle of the Ilse of Dogs), I zigzagged through the neighbourhood and approached control 12 from the park to the west. While this didn't add much distance, it did set me up for my one true mistake as I took the wrong road out of 12 bearing SSW rather than SSE and ended up at a dead-end. I took some comfort in learning after the race that one of the elite men, who finished in the top quarter, made the exact same mistake coming out that control.

Overall, I felt good about the race and my performance until I downloaded my results (at the time, 29/30 competitors). In the end, I was 72/80 runners in the Women's Vets class which was ages 40 - 49 so was much more competitive than Saturday's Women's Vets class. Still, I would have liked to have finished higher up.

note; distance is straight line, the minimum running distance was given at 7.9 km.

C • "Maritime-ness" of London... 2

6. Womens Veterans (40+) - Splits

Event: LOK Ultrasprint (UKOL16)
 

The London Orienteering Klubb hosted the Saturday event for the London Orienteering weekend with an Ultrasprint in Victoria Park. The format of the Ultrasprint sounded intimidating and, perhaps, not all that fun with no control descriptions, the possibility of multiple controls at a single feature, and a venue with every tree mapped. In actuality, the event was a lot of fun and tested sprint speed and fine navigation.

There were three prologue races of 1 km each with at least 3 maze controls on each, a class final for the top four in each class, and a mass final on the same course (with 4 butterfly-looped variations). I competed in the Women's Vets class (45-59) and did better than expected in the prologue races coming in 40/48 finishers with my best finish on course X at 26/48. The final was 1.5 km, had two butterfly loops centered on different controls, and two visits to the maze which had been surreptitiously reconfigured. I missed one of the loops on my second butterfly completely by following the wrong line out of the control and was charged for 4 missed controls - a time penalty of two minutes. My final penalized time was 13:14 placing me 27/36 finishers which I was fairly happy with considering my mistake.

All in all, it was a really fun event for all three of us. Aidan made the Juniors class final in 4th place and finished 2nd overall and Rob made up for his wobbles in the prologue in the final.

Walking (and some running to get from our diverted public transit route to the Ultrasprint event) around London visiting the Royal Observatory (where we saw part of Herschel's big telescope and peered through the fence at the marked zero meridian and walked right over it on the walk up and down the hill), the Westminster/Parliament neighbourhood, Buckingham Palace, and St. James' Park.

My back and chest have been too painful and itchy to want to put on a sports bra and run. Hopefully, my recovery will continue for the London Ultrasprint and City Run this weekend.

Early evening walk to the local convenience store. The rain this afternoon seems to have brought in an warm front.

If I hadn't had them 20 years ago, I'd think that I really am getting old having shingles on my 48th birthday.