Training Log Archive: Thraws

I love the club handicap. There's a real incentive to race hard and catch those ahead of you and not get caught by those behind. Sort of reminds me how little effort I usually make when there's 12k to go, you don't know what will get in your way, and it's just you and the map. Had a good start and led a small group through the jungle round 3 and 4. This was a bit of a blind thrash, but thankfully the flags came up OK. Made a good route choice to 7 - stay low - but didn't execute it because got distracted. Lost a bit of time in nettles and stuff near 9, but was good after that, then failed to slow on entering the complex chalk pits area and completely missed 13, eventually relocating on 22. Costly minute and quickest overall time lost here. Stopped a bit short for 15 but was otherwise pretty good after that and left the loops part of the race at the same time as Lu and led her to the wrong tree at 24. She got me on the run in. Really enjoyed the open parts of the hill but some of the forest legs were a bit sadistic, especially in June!

Disappointing final event. Despite the 'picnic' billing there were no traders and no atmosphere, no prize-giving, no coffee, and an avalanche of information about what to do and not to do. They gave you a bit more as you drove in, then provided an utterly confusing and inaudible briefing that was mostly a load of questions for the few at the front. Then the huge crowd of starters distracted me so I didn't focus on what I was doing, but there were essentially three blocks of controls on each side of the map (odds and evens) so you had to choose which blocks to go for and where to turn the map over. I went for the biggest, middle, block but got some I should have left for the return leg and made a hash of the one over the road (which may have been in the wrong place?) so never had enough time to collect everything on my return ('odds') to the middle area after getting it together in the easy southern bit. I only decided to cross the road again at the last minute so ended with a respectable 18 out of 27. 19 would have been much better and 17 would have been a disaster. I suspect one or two controls got visited by no one at all as they were obviously suicidal. Odd planning. Thankfully over before the rain poured down.

What a great area - so runnable and so complex. Such fun this. Focussed really hard on clean start and was OK to 9, in spite of overshooting 3 (although that got me into scale). Then lost five mins on 10 and 11 by underestimating distance. Lots of people all round all doing same thing, though, so keep focussed. Spiked about half the remaining dozen or so controls, so got away from some of those who'd managed to catch me up. Lack of confidence in circle occasionally cost me seconds, and big error at 14 after I tried to read paths but failed, meant I ended with about nine or ten mins of mistakes. But, again, I was fairly pleased with how the whole thing went and buzzing at the finish.