Thursday 19 November 2015

Roaches Fell Race

Roaches race map (from MowCopRunners website)
I've done this race twice before (2008, 2012)and it's always a hard early winter fell race with 5 big climbs throughout the first and second halves of a race. This and it being 'out n back' (Tittesworth to Shutlingsloe n back) make it an unusual format.

Weather threatened to go bad all day, but never quite managed it.

I've not done much running apart from Peak Raid last weekend with Nathan, so was unsure as to fitness. Not cycled that much either !

First half was a struggle, jelly babies soon sorted that and I had a better second half - I think I overtook about 4 on the second half, but still felt like I wasn't running that well and should have been 5-7 places higher.

Nevertheless, a great local race and certainly still one of my faves.

19th out of 148, so top 13%
Results are here
Strava flyby here
Strava here
Roaches 2012 write up here (10th out of 134)
Roaches 2008 results here (2:26:57)
Roaches Fell Race route profile.

Tuesday 3 November 2015

Peak Raid 3h. Round 2, Glossop & Bleaklow, Joint 2nd

It's been a while since I've done a Mini MM Nav event, so a gap in the diary was very quickly filled with this great looking event. It looked perfect for me as it ;

* Was in Winter, so conditions could be bad (ie great running!)
* Had a top quality map (as it's organised by the guys behind Peel Land Surveys) and
* The course goes over high level open access land, so running would be hard.

Nathan and Chris from the club had expressed an interest in getting into Nav style events, so Nathan and me decided to head up for this and enter as a pair so that he could get an insight into tactics and nav practice.
Peak Raid 3h, Round 2 Map - All controls shown with our choice highlighted
As it happened, the day turned out to be the warmest ever recorded in November and so navigation was never really a problem, although bearings were taken on several controls (especially 14 to the all important 15 which was 70 pts).

After we got the map, we headed straight off - making route choice whilst running up the road. We wanted to have lots of route choice at the end (to fine tune the time at the end as every minute back loses 50pts!) so we decided to leave the top left of the map to the end where we could add on or remove controls as time permitted.

Small Nav errors at 11 (wrong stream!) and 8 (overshot the stream junction) and 3 (the quarry was a nightmare!) lost us about 10 minutes all in which with hindsight would have been enough for us to add on control 5 which was 20 points.

All in all - a great day out - challenging course, hard running, great views, a great results, good nav practice and a great intro for Nathan. Great fun!

Joint 2nd overall (behind Duncan Harris of UK Ultra fame)
Results here
Explorer Events website here