Last thing I was talking about on here was going to London to help at a Rat race, it was a kind of crap weekend in the end!! Piret got there on Friday morning thinking she was going to be needed all day helping setting things up, but turns out she didn’t do anything in till 9pm by which stage I was already there so she could have worked the morning and came down with me but ohh well. So we spent all Friday night sorting out race packs and building tents at 1am we decided it was enough for us and went back to the backpackers for a few hours sleep. Saturday we didn’t end up doing much which was rather boring as it meant we stood around most of the day doing nothing waiting for some jobs to do. Sunday was slightly better had to man a river crossing where competitors had to carry their bike through the river. All and all was rather crap weekend and we have discovered we really don’t like London!!!! It took us over two hours to travel 20miles in a car was just stupid!!! So we were happy to leave on Sunday evening!!!
The following weekend we headed to the Lake District once more!! This time for another race called the "Dirty Weekend" it ended up to be very dirty!!! Ok not dirty in that way!! Just muddy dirty!!! We arrived on Friday evening to help out for a few hours on Registration then to be asked to help the course setter. This involved staying up to 2am printing maps writing log books for all competitors. On Saturday we got the job of planning the night stage which was going to be an hour MTB Orienteering score event. For the morning we sat in our nice warm log house out of what seemed like nonstop rain!!! Around 11am we headed for the event centre to find a mud pool the area was sooo wet. The funny part was the tent site, where competitors were staying some of the tents were now in the middle of a new lakes while others had rivers running through their tents some flattened by the wind. Lucky our cabin was still toasty and warm!!! We ran around the map which was to be used that night, all the tracks were now rivers, marshes were now lakes!!!
Was quite fun thou!!! The course was pretty simple to set just had to change the map in a few places because of new tracks and also tracks that had seemed to have disappeared. Once we had put all the controls out we went back to the cabin to start the process of sorting the map and also descriptions. Once we had planned it all we went over to event centre to find them packing up half of the stuff in the tents as they weren’t sure if it could take much more wind and thought it could take off!!! Would have been interesting seeing a couple of big marquees blowing away!!!
When all the competitors had arrived back from the day off running and biking in the rain it was decided that it was going to be too dangerous to set them out on the night events which I had to agree was a good call but was a bit disappointing cos we had put in all the hard work for nothing. We then went out that night to collect all the controls in again as we had to then put them out again in different locations for the next day’s race. It meant we were up once again to the early hours of the morning putting controls out and also writing route books for racers!!! Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day with just blue sky and no wind!!! Was rather nice sitting by the lake waiting for races to kayak over to us. But we were gald to be going home by the end of the day as the 2 late nights we starting to make us feel rather tired!!!
The following weekend was the last of the adventure races for the year but this wasn’t even a adventure race really. It was a 12km run but with lots of different challenges along the way. Piret and I arrived at on Friday at around 5ish we then picked up some bikes that had been rented for us then biked off to event centre. Once we arrived Shane (who was the course planner) said we have no time to waste and we are off to bike around the course as he wanted us to know what people were doing. It took us nearly a hour to bike around it whilst he showed us what they were to do at each part. It looked bloody fun I have to say!!! Once we got back he then said ok now we have to go and tape the course. So that was around 7pm he said that well at 7am I was still going Piret was lucky enough to have gone at 1am but yeah I stayed on all night so by the time the race started the 2 coffees and 3 cokes I had were keeping me charging!!! Well atleast for the nxt few hours!!!! Once all the racers had gone past we then got the job of pulling down all the tape and signs luckily that only took a few hours as there were about 10people helping instead of two which we had all night. I was glad to be going home after that and was even better knowing that I had the day off work on Monday so could sleep all day to recover.
At work that week I was transferred to Sheffield station which at first I thought wasn’t going to be so great but then once I started working there figured out it was sooo much better!!!! Days went faster as I have more to do and also its just closer to home so doesnt take as along to travel in.
The weekend of the 19th Oct we had our first orienteering race in UK, it was the UK club champs so they wanted as many runners as they could get to run, our club has a number of good elites but normally we don’t win as we lose it in the other grade this time thou we won so the club was rather happy about that!!! My run well let’s just say it was a good learning curve!!!! Piret also learnt quite abit too. Least we can only get better!!!
