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Thursday, September 30, 2010

Rat Race

OH MY GOD!!!!! I need to remember the course director of this series can't measure distances, after our 4hr extravaganza in the Green Belter a few months ago!

The Plan: "Mean Streets" Sat 25th, 5-7:30pm, 10-15k on foot through central London.
Reality: 20k!!! This was a team event with me, Krysia and my sister. The furthest my sister has run before is 10k!

Follow that up on Sunday with the "Nine-to-Five" - The Plan: 65k, mainly on bike including a max 5k on foot.
Reality: 75k, including 13k on foot, 1.5k kayak, 50m swim, 25m abseil, 10m rolling down hill (yes really)!!

Krysia got special comendation on her style of rolling down hill by the one and only Dean Macey who was also competing!! (By the way, we beat him!)

The Rat Race is really fun, so long as you know what you're letting yourself in for. We danced in the street to buskers, tried to guess beers, did kareoke at Bloomsbury Bowling, orienteered, abseiled down the Oval cricket ground, swam a length of Cystal Palace pool, got lost in a maze, did a circuits session and a BMF session, a couple of climbing walls, footy skills and rolled in fountains! Fortunately we didn't get to the checkpoint where you had to eat cockles!

So, after 10hrs and 100k we're ready for a rest.

Hopefully with all of that I might now be fit enough for a Half Marathon this weekend....

London City Orienteering

September 18th was the day when we finally slowed Frank down!

The 3rd City of London Orienteering event started at Tower Hill - taking in about a million roads, alleys and courtyards that you never knew were there - before finishing in glorious sunshine at City Hall.

It's certainly the first orienteering event I've been to where we could have dim sum overlooking the finish after the event!

Above is an extract from the Mens Open class - billed as 8.2km. My route (shown by the red squiggly line) was 8.2miles! I made the wrong route choice a few times but that's not surprising given the number of twists and turns you have to take to find the best route - up, down, over or through the city.
Next year the race is on the 10th September 2011 - ask Frank if you want to know what it feels like to compete as a novice, ask Martin if you want some hints and tips!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Ice pack therapy tests

If you are suffering from foot pain, achilles tendon problems or shin splints you can help evaluate some special ice packs designed to keep the chill pack on the problem area. Contact Frank in the first instance.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Bristol Half Marathon 2010


I had been led to believe that the weather would be good on Sunday. The five day forecast had said so and also there was all that talk of the “last weekend of summer.” However, when I got up on Sunday, it was distinctly grey. When I actually got to the runners’ area it was properly raining and I wished that I was one of the sensible people who had a binbag.

The start was organised in two waves. It will surprise no-one to know that I was in the second wave, which started half an hour after the first one. This was actually just as well, because the queue for the bagdrop was fairly long and the queue for the toilets were ridiculously long. I overheard some first wavers complaining that they’d missed their start because of the queues. I didn’t make it to my pen and just had to join the end of the people walking to the start. To be fair, this meant that I started at the back, which was where I’d have been if I’d been in my pen.

The first five miles went out of Bristol along the Avon gorge and then the next five miles came back the same way. For this bit the waved start was good for me psychologically because I could tell myself that all the people running in the opposite direction had had a head start! Once I passed five miles and was going the other way, it felt like I was going in the right direction. The last three miles was around Bristol centre and so there were more people supporting at that point. This was good because I really felt the last three miles. I didn’t walk any of it, which I was pleased with, but during the last bit I was jogging at the same speed as the walkers.

It didn’t rain the whole way, but it was pretty rainy for a lot of the time. This probably wasn’t a terrible thing. Both Fiona and Sinead will attest that the half marathon in Brighton in February was in horrible weather and that was my best half marathon time to date. I had been pretty worried about the expected hot weather beforehand. The rain obviously helped, because I finished in less than a minute over my Brighton time and I was pleased with that.

Bristol was my third half this year and my fourth in total. Rather alliteratively, all of the halves this year have begun with B. I have completed Brighton, Berlin, Bristol and in October I am going to have a go at Birmingham. I might try and have a go at beating my Brighton time in Birmingham, but for me to do that it might just have to rain.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Our first 1st!!

WELL DONE PETE!!!

Click here for a link to our very own Pete Olds tremendous result in winning the Clapham Common 5k on the 23rd August.

Dipping under 18mins he sets the benchmark quite high for the rest of us to follow!

Clapham Runners in Indochina

Clapham Runners have been spotted far and wide!
We had a great morning riding around on Mae San the elephant in a sanctuary in Cambodia


We continued our travels through Vietnam then onwards to Cambodia, to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat


How far has your Clapham Runners t-shirt gone?!!