Winning Wintery Weekend ❄️

The last race I 'ran' (battled!) was the Lakes Sky Ultra way back in Sept. A brutal 13 hours plus in all weathers. Today's race was, in stark contrast, around 13 minutes long! 

The Durham Relays are a popular local lung-buster and at the short end of my range, being only 3000 m long and on mainly flat grass. We made our annual pilgrimage from Tynedale, this time managing 3 ladies' and 1 men's team. 

I was looking forward to the social aspect and teaming up with Kirstie & Karen, once again, but this time in the older v45+ category. 

Kirstie had a strong run on the first leg and brought us in well up the field, hanging on to the youngsters as best she could! I took over on leg 2 and quickly got into my running. I was pleased to overtake a couple of runners and felt strong throughout, although I was worried that fatigue might set in on lap 2.

Karen was away at speed and zoomed round her two laps, as usual. Kirstie & I scrutinised the finishers carefully to check whether they look as old as us or not!! We concluded that we looked the oldest team so far and hoped that we had won the vets relays. 

As the results are complex, there's often a long wait so we've now found some lovely off-road cool down runs. Karen & I treated the Tynedale ladies to one of these - well I think they said it was a treat!!

Coffee and results time soon came around and we were delighted to be announced as NE Champions - yeah 👍

I also managed to sneak in some orienteering on Sat with Cutie who was super quick at spotting the controls on the yellow course. She was a 'winner', too ! Good practise for me and good fun for her. 

New Year, 'new' sport....

After a quiet few months, recovering from the many miles run ( in a small number of races!) , I have been thinking about trying some local orienteering races. I did a bit of orienteering a couple of years ago, which the girls and I all enjoyed for a while, but things get busy and there is never time to do everything that I would like to. 

A fellow Harrier drew my attention to a local event today, which spurred me on to get out in the mud with my compass and whistle! I chose to do the long orange course which, I think, is moderately technical navigation over a long distance which was approx 5.4km (straight line distance) today.

I always have a bit of a panic at the start and a crisis of confidence over finding the first control! Luckily, I headed in the correct direction and found the first 3 controls quite easily. There was a long run to 4 which had me hoping my strategy was correct but it all worked out fine and the control was where I had hoped it would be! The most tricky ones for me, were 6 & 8. I knew where I was going but there was a myriad of paths and lots of slippery mud to disturb your concentration. I was pleased that I found the sneakily placed 10, but wasn't sure about how to get to the finish. After a bit of indecision (should have just gone with my gut instinct) I dibbed out. Returning to registration at the Scout Hut, I handed back my dibber and was happy that it confirmed that I had visited all of the required controls! Phew, mission accomplished! 

Even better, I subsequently found out that I had been fastest over the long orange course 😃

There are lots of great things about orienteering :

* it involves running, but also thinking!

* sociable - great to see my Club members in a different environment

* you are always learning something. Today I learnt that this sign ^ means a ditch and I remembered that white is the area you can run through (would have got me to 6 quicker on a bearing) and that the olive green (RHS of map) is settlement. 

Can't wait for the next one!