Saturday Results | Sunday Results | CUOC report

Last weekend a load of people went to a classic race in November: the November Classic. Ben W, Ben S, and still-managing-to-be-CUOC Emma headed off from Cambridge in the first car on Saturday morning for the Winchester City Race. Ben S managed to put the postcode in wrong and lead us to a very full car park, before we led ourselves to a different car park with a very empty top floor, which was also very far from the assembly area. However, it did mean that we got to walk across the centre to get to the race, thereby seeing where the busy shopping street was, and spotting a rather good chocolate shop to come back to later. Emma didn't run so that she could work, but we don't think she got much work done. She still out-cooled most of the other CUOCers though, who didn't come until the evening because of work.

The race was nice, it went through various types of urban terrain and showed us interesting bits of Winchester, although navigationally it wasn't especially difficult. DrongO got 3rd and 4th on the Men's and Women's courses respectively (Ben W and Sarah R).

Sarah also came, bringing two triathlon friends with them from Oxford. Turns out their friends had tried two orienteering events, then decided to do the OMM the previous weekend, throwing themselves in the deep end! We all went to the pub after the race for lunch, followed by the chocolate shop where Ben couldn't finish his chocolate cake because it was outrageiously sugary/chocolatey, but fortunately many others were willing to help. We were also joined by Rory whose ankle is gradually recovering after an operation on it, and Michal, a friend from Zuzka's Czech club who is currently working in Brighton.

We drove back to Zuzka's parents empty house and dropped off the CUOCers to do work whilst the others went to see fireworks in the neighbouring village. It was quite an impressive display considering it was in a village. We then returned to make veggie chilli, but due to lack of saucepan space there was a pan of rice, a pan of lentils+tomatoes, and two steamers on top of other vegetables - then you mixed them on your plate! The CUOC car arrived at just about the right time for food to be ready. In the evening Paul tried to do a Scottish accent but it didn't sound as Scottish as a Scottish person, the ex-CUOC men's captain's first disappointment of the weekend. There were 11 people sleeping in the 2-bedroom house, but I think there was still space for a few more.

On Sunday morning Paul tried to be helpful by making porridge, but he got the recipe wrong and actually made a mush of hot oats and water, his second disappointment of the weekend. Fortunately adding banana or sugar to it covered up for his reckless behaviour.

We drove to the race and it rained, but not too heavily. The area was very fast, mostly open with a few patches of forest. There were some interesting long legs with over/round routes and through/round the gorse routes. The ex-CUOC men's captain thought he might be able to catch the DrongO captain by four minutes, but actually only caught him by 7 seconds, underachieving his expectations by a staggering 97%, his third disappointment of the weekend.

After the race we all had to go home and not do more orienteering, which was everybody's final disappointment of the weekend. Looking forward to the Southern Night and Long champs later this month!

On 6th-8th October, 9 DrongOs headed out to Stockholm for a long weekend. The reason for going was that Ben W had a flight voucher from BA giving him £100 off per person for up to 9 people, so we needed to make best use of it. We met on Friday evening at Heathrow (except Bara, who flew there straight from Czech Republic). James H had lounge access and Dan was the first to volunteer himself as the guest, so they enjoyed free stuff whilst the rest of us read Matthew's chartered engineer application form and tried to fill up our water bottles from a very slow machine, which claimed to have saved 20 plastic bottles with the amount of water it took to fill up one. Dan brought some ice cream back from the lounge and then we got on the plane.

When we landed, Bara had already arrived at the Ravinen Club hut, and couldn't find the key. It was about midnight at this point, so most people who could have been helpful were asleep. It turned out that Ben W had forgotten to email the key holder to remind him to hide the key, and the key holder had forgotten to hide the key. We did get through to him, but he was 200km from Stockholm so couldn't help. We spend the 90 minute journey from the airport wondering what to do, whether to try to cram into a hotel room or just sleep outside. When we arrived we tried the windows, and there was one which wasn't secured very well, which we managed to get in through! Panic over.

We had a good lie in in the morning and then went training on the area next to the hut. It was also the 25 manna relay today, but we didn't have 25 people, and didn't want to get up before 7 to give us time to make the start. The terrain lived up to Swedish expectations of complicated contours and rocks, and nicely runnable. We were doing the "naturpasset" permanent course, which meant we didn't even have to hang controls!

Ben W and Matthew V were first back and immediately went off to the supermarket to buy food for the weekend. Fortunately a 1p coin worked to release a shopping trolley. Matthew decided to load all the very heavy things into his holdall, rather than splitting them evenly between the three bags we had, and therefore struggled to carry the bag back to the bus stop. When we got back we counted the weight, which was 25kg, plus another 20kg or so in the other bags. Everybody thought we had bought way too much food, but it turned out we'd only bought a little bit too much food (we did eat about 4.5kg out of the 5kg of cheese). We basically had a whole Sarah Gales worth of food to eat.

After a late lunch we went to do a 5-person trains exercise in the forest to the north of the hut. The course did a lap of the lake which gave some great views from the cliff tops when on the far side of the lake. When we got back, Ben, Richard, Natalie and James jumped in the lake, while Matthew nobly sacrificed his swim to take photographic evidence for the rest of us. We thought the water might still be warm from the summer, but we were very wrong. Fortunately the sauna in the hut was waiting a few hundred metres away, so after a few rounds of sauna we had a late dinner of veggie chilli and apple crumble.

It was an early start on Sunday, since we went to the middle distance race which accompanied the 25 manna relay from yesterday. On the way there we enjoyed splitting into two groups for a tube train race between Slussen and Central Station. Unfortunately, the side-by-side trains were above each other by the final station, so we don't know who won. The forest was about a 15 minute walk from an underground station (Stockholm is great) and was very very runnable. We discovered that the meaning of "elite" in Sweden is quite different. All 9 of us were entered on the elite course, and all the men except Matthew had been demoted to a second elite course because the first one was full. Of the 66 people on W21E, DrongO got 60th (Zuzka), 64th (Natalie), 65th (Fiona), and 66th (Bara). This was despite Zuzka having a pretty good run, with better min/km than all the DrongO men who didn't mispunch. Matthew managed to mispunch, and on M21E-2, we achieved 40th (Dan), 41st (James), with Richard mispunching and Ben retiring with a bad knee. Classic DrongO in a nutshell. The organisers were nice though, and didn't disqualify the people who took longer than the two hour time limit...

In the afternoon it was very sunny and Zuzka went back to the hut to do more orienteering that she'd missed out on yesterday because she had to work, while everybody else went to be tourists in the centre. Dan and Bara went to a ship museum about a ship which didn't work, while everybody else went to see an ammunition factory which hadn't worked and was replaced by a building commemorating how it didn't work. Ben discovered he wasn't thin enough to fit through a metal ring. Dan and Bara went for a coffee, while everybody else walked past many nice fresh ice cream shops to search for packaged Daim ice cream, which must be eaten when in Sweden.

When we got back to the hut Zuzka had finished orienteering and had gone for a walk, so Ben went to meet her. Richard sent a message to the WhatsApp group saying that dinner was nearly ready, to which Ben replied "We will be back in 10 mins, soz we were a bit busy getting engaged". Most people hadn't read it when they got back, which was amusing for Ben and Zuzka, and the people who had read it hadn't said anything. Then Natalie read it and made no hesitation in asking about it, which was also amusing.

We ate pasta bake and played a Czech game calle Bang. Some people decided to see if it was possible to resist being tickled by tensing your core muscles. Ben was quite good at it, while Zuzka, Matthew, and Fiona were all terrible. Once dinner had gone down, some people went for the reflexbana (following reflectors in the forest). Matthew and James ended up doing 15k having cut the long loop short.

On Monday morning, having finally had a normal night's sleep and Matthew had recharged fully, some people went to do a different part of the permanent course to the west of the hut, while injured people went for a walk around the lake, and Matthew and James headed east (Matthew orienteering, and James doing a path run because his ribs were hurting after running into the side of a car the day before we came to Sweden).

We ate the leftovers from the previous meals for lunch, and sadly threw away the leftovers of the leftovers, before clearing up and heading off to the airport. Another fun weekend for DrongO. The next trip's the cross country skiing in January, which 15 people are coming to so far!

Day 1 - Friday Middle Race

The 2018 London City Race weekend started with a middle distance urban race around Rotherhithe. It was quite tricky, with a couple of especially tricky sections of short legs which you needed to be well prepared for! On the women's course, Zuzka S came 6th and Natalie H was 8th, while Ben W won the men's elite by 14 seconds, with Tom Dobra in 9th. James was involved in a Jeremy/Dan situation and followed somebody to the wrong control.

In the evening there were 6 people staying at Ben and Zuzka's little flat, and based on this they decided that 12 people would just about fit sleeping there if needed. Sarah and Riggas had been to a wedding instead of the race, but were ironically still the first to arrive because Dan was waiting at the station for Bara to arrive from Czech. By then it was quite late so the initial apple crumble making plans were postponed. Dan gave Bara a t-shirt, which was a nice present for a while until it turned out it was free from a careers fair.

Day 2 - Saturday Main Race

The assembly area was the same as yesterday, and DrongO found a suitably prominent place for the banner to be put up. The weather was pretty perfect. The courses were good, planned by JOK's Ed Catmur, and even though there were some easier legs across blocks of buildings, you had to use these to plan ahead to the more tricky sections if you wanted to do well! It was 2k to the start, including crossing Tower Bridge, which meant those with later starts had to time their journey to the start for when the bridge wasn't open!

In the men's elite Ben W was top DrongO in 4th place, 2:32 down on the winner, followed closely by James H in 6th, who had been leading at the mid-point of the race but made some mistakes in the second half. We then had Tom D 12th, Ben S 16th, and Cedric F was very excited to beat Dan S by 21 seconds to get 40th place. Iain Stemp was also spotted in a DrongO top coming 53rd. Now official DrongO-in-law Riggas came 43rd on Men's Open, followed closely by Richard W.

The women's saw Sarah R just making the top 10, with Natalie H 17th, Miranda L 25th, and Andrea Stefkova reappearing in 29th after a long time not orienteering, followed 6 seconds behind by Zuzka S. Bara Z got round probably her first ever elite course and even beat some people! Raphaelle ran W40+, claiming that this is the age her body is, which is clearly not true.

After the race we continued the Dicken's Inn tradition of going for Beast Pizza. This year the quantity wasn't as ridiculous as last year, we ate 4 of the beasts between 15 of us. It was a very good turn out considering several DrongOs were in Ireland at the MMM instead!

Natalie then invited us all back to her house to play some games, so most of us went there and played Mafia and Mascarade for the rest of the afternoon. We then headed back to Ben and Zuzka's flat to make curry for dinner. Apple crumble was postponed indefinitely as we were all quite full by the time we'd eaten the curry. During the course of the evening we discovered that 5 people had managed to leave something at Natalie's house, the most impressive being Bara who had left her entire bag behind and not noticed. Luckily Natalie could bring everything the next day! There was time for a quick game of Articulate before bed.

Day 3 - Sunday Middle Race

On Sunday there was another Middle race based in Bloomsbury. This one was navigationally much simpler, and although there were a couple of hard to decide route choices, it was mostly about running hard. There was a "self standing banners only" rule, so the DrongO banner was eventually stood up tied to a bench, and later supported by being stuck in a bin by Dan, much to everybody else's disapproval. Those of us staying with Ben and Zuzka hired Santander bikes and cycled to the race.

The men's was a very close finish, with James H in 2nd just 9 seconds off the win, and Ben W another 13 seconds behind. Tom D and Ben S were 6th and 7th to make the top 10 40% DrongO! Dan also got beaten by 22s by Katrin H's almost non-orienteering fiancee Hugo Popplewell. In the women's there were three top 10s: Katrin H in 4th, Sarah R 5th, with Natalie in 8th.

After the race it was sunny again, and some people left and some people went for a picnic in a nearby park to finish another great weekend of running around central London!

A few DrongOs met up in the Lake District this weekend to go for a walk: Ben, Zuzka, Matthew, Fiona, John, Helen P. Ben's previous two visits to Langdale had involved the cars getting flooded and him breaking his arm, but this time nothing especially bad happened. On Saturday four of us walked over Pike of Blisco and Shelter Crags, which weren't very sheltered. Fiona was bagging Nutalls, there were 10 today but we think she might have been to nut-all of them because it was quite foggy.

We got back to the car as Matthew and Zuzka arrived, and cooked dinner at the edge of the road sheltered from cars by Matthew's warning triangles. Then we camped by Stickle Tarn through a wet and windy night. On Sunday morning we did a shorter 3-Nutall walk including High Raise. We headed down to the cars and Matthew and Fiona left. The rest of us camped Sunday night in the same place and sat by the lake drinking tea, feeling a bit cold, but admiring the rather impressive stars, before walking down in the morning and going to work.

This weekend, we discovered:

• Matthew is actually a sheep
• Fiona would prefer it if Matthew was a cat
• Ben is going to get wet if he mentions Fiona nut going to a Nutall one more time
• Zuzka doesn't enjoy being kicked in the night
• John doesn't complain if there is nothing to complain about
• Helen still enjoys playing peek-a-boo after all these years

Day 1 - Sprint, Bath University

Six DrongOs (Ben W, Ben S, Zuzka S, Sarah *R*, James S, and Dan S) and DrongO offer holder Rowan Lee met at the sprint champs at Bath University. There were also some other DrongOs who for some reason had decided they would go with their beloved families instead of the DrongO group. Dan only decided he was coming on Thursday evening, and managed to get a lift off WAOC last minute from Cambridge, but didn't have an entry.

The area was good for a sprint, and although the multi-level area which was shown in the final details had produced some controversy, the courses were fairly planned and the element of luck was minimised. The assembly area was excellent, at the uni sports centre by an athletics track with showers and good spectator views over the finish. In the morning were the heats. In the men's, Ben W was the only DrongO to make the A final, with our favourite James making a mistake in the multi-level part and missing out. Sadly there were no DrongO women in the A final.

The A finals were run before all the others, which means that for some people there wasn't enough time to sample the barbecue which was being held over lunch. Ben W finished 13th overall with a 40s mistake, and it turns out the top runners were taking it easy in the heats as they opened up the gap in the final quite significantly. On Men's B, James H was 6th with Tom D and Mark Bown in 14th and 15th. The Women's B saw Sarah R finishing 4th and Miranda L in 14th. Dan entered orange on the day and did the course, but in the middle of it diverted in an attempt to punch as many controls as he came across, and came back with about 40 controls.

After the race we drove most of the way to Bath City Centre to where parking was still free, and walked the last bit. Ben turned on location sharing so that Zuzka, who had been at a youth hostel all day working, could come and find us, this wasn't very successful because Zuzka's phone is rubbish. Meanwhile, we saw the river, looked through the windows of a historic map shop, had fun running along a paving-slab maze with grass "walls", the Abbey, the Circus, and the Crescent. Along the way Sarah saw a guy carrying an ice cream with a WAFFLE cone, and asked him where we bought it. He bought it in a shop with a cow outside. We all had ice cream there, which came in a huge variety of flavours. We then went and had dinner in a pub and went back to the cars. On the way back Dan was using Ben W's phone Wifi hotspot, and Ben enjoyed controlling Dan by running away, and he had to follow if he wanted to stay connected. We also spotted a Waitrose and bought some very reduced bakery goods, as well as ingredients for breakfast pancakes.

We then drove an hour to Street Youth hostel and spent the evening eating the aforementioned pastries and playing bananagrams.

Day 2 - Middle, Stockhill, Somerset

We had quite late starts on Sunday so had lots of time in the morning to have a lie in and then make pancakes with banana and Nutella. Even after that, we still had some time so played a few rounds of the card game Cambio. Dan and Rowan had a milk drinking race to finish the last bit of milk before we left, which despite Dan being rather quick, Rowan still won by a significant margin.

The race was in a small area which had been remapped for the event - a comparison in the final details between the two made it barely recognisable that they were the same area from the way the detailed contour shapes had been remapped. The ground in the wood often looked like there was a lot of vegetation, but it was actually pretty easy to run through.

In the men's elite, Ben W was top DrongO in 6th, 2:42 behind winner Jonny Crickmore two took the double title of both sprint and middle this weekend. Ben S finished in 12th, James H in 17th. and Mark B in 21st. The women's elite course saw Miranda Leaf being top DrongO in 15th, with Sarah in 21st and Zuzka in 23rd. The W16 course was exciting on the commentary as the silver and bronze medal winners were decided on the run-in split. Dan again entered Orange on the day (M12) and punched so many extra controls whilst doing the course that the computer couldn't automatically assign his course by looking at what he'd punched, however once it was manually selected he had indeed completed the M12 course correctly, with a lot of extra punches.

After the race we had lunch (mostly chilli from the food van) and headed home by various methods of transport!

Friday - middle

Two DrongOs (Bara and Dan) participated at Nice Holidays orienteering in Czech Republic.

The first day was on Friday, late afternoon, where the start was very very very far, so we started the weekend with a 2.6k run to the start as we were a bit late. Bara succeeded in attaching her number. Dan attached it in some funny way so he lost it. But everyone knows Dan so they did let him start.

Everyone finished with a smile on their faces, including Dan and Bara's dad competing in M50. Dan was really pleased he was able to introduce the families with the help of a map. Dan ran M21U, where U stands for ultimate - the map is unusual in some funny way. On the first day there were no roads and no yellow.

Saturday - long and party

The second day was long. Bara's younger brother managed to come third at his second race ever in M10S. Natural talent! Dan's ultimate map had some roads, some contours and some rocks - not all at the same time! The hardest bit without contours was particularly challenging, as if a mistake was made one could accidentally run all the way up a wrong hill!

Later in the day, there was a pinpunching competition. Dan, who made the top 16 in the last two years, made a mistake and missed the final. Dan's mum had an excellent route choice and beat Dan by 7 seconds, nearly making the final herself - with a time of 1:06, only 4 seconds behind! We watched the final and cheered for Bara's future Czech club Kamenice (hopefully).

The Saturday night party was 2.5k away, so the organisers prepared a quiz on the way. We didn't answer all the questions correctly, however Dan knew the organizers and received the welcome drink anyway. The party was fun. Dan has (d)run(k) in a beer relay. During the race, someone accidentally spilled his drink. Dan solved the problem by confiscating a drink from one of the organisers. It didn't help as all the other teams finished before Dan even started the last leg.

Sunday - middle and prizegiving

On the last day, Dan's map was only missing roads, but it was nowhere near that easy as the colors were swapped. Dan made a few small mistakes and finished 12th overall. Bara returned from the woods with a smile on her face even on the last day, fascinated by the beautiful scenery and keen to do more orienteering in Czechia.

We went to watch the prizegiving ceremony and as we were approaching, someone told Dan he should go up the stage. It turned out Dan has won a main prize in the raffle. Everyone laughed as Dan happened to be carrying a sack of bread, which is not only his favourite food, but also a nickname amongst Czech orienteers, Breadie.

Ben W and James H attended Sprint Scotland on 20-22nd July. This was organised by "masterplan adventure", a new club set up by Graham Gristwood and friends for the purpose of organising high quality events like this. There was training on Thursday and Friday (but we only arrived on Friday) and then races at the weekend.

Results

Friday 20 July

James picked Ben up from under the M90 motorway bridge just outside Perth, where Ben had been camping the previous night. The orienteering was all near Falkirk. On Friday there were three courses in Hallglen - route choice, a long line through a complex housing estate, and a map memory exercise. We did them, and then did route choice again, this time picking different routes for comparison. We then had lunch from the local shop: sausage rolls, potato pancakes with cheese and ham, and caramel shortbread, prompting GG to think that they should have a talk on nutrition next year.

We went to a nearby campsite and then walked 3 miles into Falkirk, seeing the Falkirk wheel and Callendar House, 2 out of the area's 3 attractions. We had food in a pub on the way back where James remembered having curly chips as a child in the same chain, but it appears they no longer do them, which was very sad. In the evening was a talk by Yannick Michels of Belgium about how he thinks about sprint orienteering.

Saturday 21 July

On Saturday there were two world ranking sprint races in Denny. Ben consistently made a 20s mistake and consistently came 17th. James improved from 15th to 10th across the two races, only 30s out of touch with team GB runners! The second sprint had two very short legs around some bushes followed cunningly by a very long third leg. Ben actually did some warm down runs with James, but unlike James didn't start warming up an hour before his start. In between race naps are also highly recommended.

After the races there was time to get curry in the centre before the evening talk by Kris Jones about his methods for sprint orienteering training. He had made some nice graphics about technical, physical and mental aspects, but we couldn't see them because Chris Smithard's laptop only had open office - we think a just giving page is required to buy him a copy of PowerPoint ;)

We then returned to the campsite where there was supposed to be a ceilidh, according to the campsite owner. However, what this actually meant was that he invites all the campers/caravanners to come and play and dance, and sees who turns up. It's a great idea for getting people to talk to each other on the campsite. However, in the end it was only, us, the owner, another lady who lived in a caravan permanently, and one other family also from Aberdeen. The owner said they sometimes have up to 60 people, but we were unlucky, and most of the campers were either English or German, which gave some explanation. We played some guitar and sung and talked a bit and then went to bed.

Sunday 22 July

The next morning was the 3rd sprint race in Grangemouth. Ben cycled here via Falkirk's third and final attraction - the Kelpies. This was probably the easiest race navigationally, but still tough to do fast. James finished 10th again but with a couple of mistakes at the very end, and again about 30s off the GB runners, with Ben a minute behind in 14th. We stayed to watch the prize-giving, signed some autographs for some small children who were collecting signatures from everybody they could find, and then James headed home and Ben headed across to cycle up the west coast and outer Hebrides. Looking forward to the British Sprint Champs at the start of September!

On 23-24th June a team of (just about) 7 DrongOs made it to the Harvester Relays just outside Crawley. Despite our cobbled together team including somebody who had stayed up all night the previous night (Dan), somebody who took 4 hours last time they ran second leg (Fiona), somebody who occasionally gets beaten by an honorary DrongO (Matthew), somebody who claims to be slow (Zuzka), somebody who didn't want to run in terrain because of recovering broken arm (Ben W), somebody who'd just got a 5k PB of 14:25 the previous evening (James), and Ben Stevens, we actually had a pretty decent result, coming 6th overall out of 13 teams, and won three of the legs.

The afternoon before the race the two Bens went to an urban race in Staines. It was one of the better urban races, and the courses were true to the final details in being 75% longer than straight line distance. There were lots of interesting route choices and terrain varied with modern housing estates, council estates, the city centre, some parkland, and also a graveyard where it was in-bounds to run across the graves!

Ben W was pleased to not be that slow, finishing 1st. Ben S 2 minutes behind in 3rd, having won the timed out road crossing with a time of just 10 seconds.

In the evening we met the rest of the team (and also UBOC) in a pub in Crawley for dinner, before walking to the area and pitching our tents. The campsite was in a very runnable bit of forest.

Dan Safka started us off on first leg, and mostly had a good run except for a 35 minute split on a particular control - he was pleased that his GPS watch finally came in useful though for seeing where he actually was! Fiona beat her time from 5 years ago by around 3 hours. The rest of the team continued with some solid runs, with Matthew, Ben W and James winning their legs (there were lots of paths with advantaged both James and Ben a fair amount).

In the morning James went home to visit his parents whilst he was back from Aberdeen and was replaced by Pavel who had been running for BKO, and we went for a walk up Leith Hill, where there was a great view over London and the second excellent climbing tree of the day was found. This was followed by a very good (if slightly pricey) Sunday lunch in a village pub to finish the weekend!

What some people did on 2nd June 2018

Ben W went back to Cambridge for a day and it was fun. Tesco lorries say "no baguettes are kept in this van overnight". Dan met him at the station. Ben assumed they were going to brunch at Darwin because Dan and Bára had clicked "going" on the Facebook event, but it turned out to be fake news because Bára was in Oxf*rd and Dan didn't know what brunch Ben was talking about. Half way there, whilst discussing the optimal route to Darwin, Dan realised he didn't have his phone because he'd left it balanced on one of the bike racks at the station. After a run back there in sandals, he found it and they could continue to brunch. In Darwin gardens they bumped into DrongO offer holders Alice and Zoe, who were revising. On the way to midsummer common, DrongO offer holder Anna cycled by, probably off to do some revision. At midsummer common it was the strawberry fair, where no CUOCers were because they were revising.

After that, DrongO in law Pavel met us on Parker's Piece for a mini picnic, and Jeremy, who had been playing frisbee for the rest of the afternoon, joined us too. Then we went to pilates where Emma, Helen O, Lily, and Elizabeth had got their priorities just right by turning up.

This was followed by a barbecue on Jesus Green, during which Emma explained how you could tell that she wasn't wearing tights, and we played inverse piggy in the middle with Jeremy's frisbee.

The British long and relay championships were held in Scotland on 19-20th May. James H provided accommodation at his flat in Aberdeen, finally making use of all the extra space by filling it with 10 people (6 DrongOs and 5 UBOCs).

Ben and Zuzka arrived by plane on Thursday evening, and Ben and James were keen to climb Mount Keen on Friday, so they did. Zuzka was also keen but had to work instead. Matthew V, Ben S, and Tom D arrived on Friday evening, Tom having another 4 Bristol people in tow. James decided that a 30k walk wasn't enough so went for a run which most people joined him for. Meanwhile Matt Pickering gave a sneak preview of a new, improved Trail-O scoring website.

Saturday was the long distance champs at Balmoral Castle. The Queen wasn't there, we were told she had gone to some wedding instead. We think she should get her priorities sorted. However, the assembly area was exquisitely mowed and ideal for lying in the sun. The area was steep and fairly rough running, with far more over-or-round route choices than you would normally get in the UK. In the men's, Matthew had a very good run to finish in 17th, in a time of 110:30, 18 mins down on the winner. James caught John by 6 minutes and they had fun overtaking each other several times in the last bit of the course. Ben W took a picnic with his broken arm and came last - his application to the 200 club was rejected by Ben S on the grounds that you have to get in by being lost, not broken.

After the race we walked up Scolty for a view from the top of a hill, while some of Bristol went swimming in the Dee. Then we cooked bolognaise with a special guest ingredient of broccoli.

The relays were on Sunday in an undulating forest with some very very fast bits, and lots of brashings in some sections. After discovering the Matthew was running for WCOC and we hadn't noticed despite him telling us, sqaDRON GOld this time was James H, John O, Ben S - finishing 13th of 22 teams. Matthew decided his men's short first leg wasn't enough, so ran second leg in a non-comp team with Zuzka and Ben too. Afterwards we climbed a mountain called Morven it was steep on the way up and slightly less steep on the way down. Zuzka lay on the floor at the top to shelter from the wind, which disappointed Ben S because he was trying to take photos with her silhouette in.