My first Regional as a W35 today ! And I entered the long course, which means I'm running against Anna all the time now !! We left Crawley very early this morning, for a Sunday and headed off towards Reading for the BKO Concorde Chase Regional event.
The weather was excellent, pleasantly sunny and warm, for January ! The W35L course was 7.7kms with only 85m of climb and only 8 entered on it. All the courses looked a bit long, but with very little climb, it wasn't too bad.
I had to buy some new gaiters before I even started today, as my previous VJ ones fell apart at the SOG at Rivers Wood yesterday. So I started with some shiny new blue gaiters today (well they had to be blue as club colours didn't they ?!).
The start was only a five minute walk from the car parking field and Mike and I were starting at the same time today. We got to the start in plenty of time, but couldn't see much beyond the start lane and map boxes. All maps were 1:10,000 and on waterproof paper (seems to be the norm for Regional events now) and on our minute, we punched the start, picked up our maps and I overtook Mike !! He always seems to take longer than I do studying his map at the start, then racing off, where I pick up my map, figure out the direction I need to go to get out of sight of the start at least and go. It wasn't long before he raced past me though.
I messed up the first control a bit, my route choice was ok, but I should have stuck with my first thought and followed the ditch along to the veg boundary, than trying to be clever. Ho hum, anyway I wasn't far off and I hit a track so knew exactly where I was. Navigation to the second control was better, then the first of many road crossings. Route choice to number three was ok, a lot of path running, but possibly the longest way round ! I was almost spot on with it though, which was good, but got caught up in some brashings and fell over right by the control. What I didn't realise until I'd finished was that I has ripped my running tights, drawn blood and bashed my knee, which is still quite sore now at 7.30pm. (even after using a an ice pack earlier).
We had some longer legs further on, with route choices, except 7 to 8 where we had the entire 85m climb, past a stunning looking house ! Some places were very wet, from 8 to 9, I saw a couple of men ahead of me looking a bit stuck, so I opted for a path run and came across a lovely orange looking stream which had a lot of water in it ! In fact, most ditches, streams and pits were pretty wet. I saw Mike a few times, as we had some identical legs, he assisted me to control 12 actually and then raced past me again later on to the last control and onto the finish.
On downloading, I was 1st of 2 !!!! That didn't last long though as once Anna had finished she said I was 2nd, until she downloaded. Final result is I ended 6th of 8, so not too bad as I'm running longer courses than I'm used to. The Forerunner said I actually ran 9.12kms today over a 7.7kms course, which is amazing. I didn't feel too bad running the distance. I haven't downloaded the data yet, as I've been resting my knee. Must do more training !