Cunning Running

Rightly or wrongly I've signed myself up for "Sleepwalker 2009" which is a 20 mile night navigation course through the Brecon Beacons. The current course record holder is by a bloke from the British Army Orienteering Team with a course time of 3 hours and 7 minutes..... I'm a realist of course and I'm going to get nowhere near that time probably double that and a bit more if I'm honest.....but he is probably a turbo psycho nutter..... grit yer teeth and take it on the hoof kinda guy......

The course meanders through the likes of "Fan y Big" shown here above with a nice view off the "diving board" and "Crybin" shown below... it's been a long time since I've done any kind of orienteering but I always enjoyed it when I did do it.... and I've never had any problem with my map reading skills.... although at night it's going to prove challenging to get my bearings over a 20 mile course ....(lets hope the full moon is out !!) .......it'll be a bit of an adventure methinks :)..... I'm taking our friend Niki with me... it's her who convinced me to do it in the first place, she wanted to do it but has no navigation skills (pretty essential really on an orienteering course),.....she's actually a very good runner with sub 8 minute miles (I think) under her belt thus far... I've told her straight.... I'm walking it not running.... she might get the odd jog out of me but that is as far as I'll go.... 20 miles at night is a lonnnnnnnnnnnnng haul, I've done it before many times and it's not like running 10 miles on the flat, it's over rough tracks and streams and possibly fences and slippery grass and rocks and moss covered stones .... there's even a full on scramble thrown in as well.... not to mention some ridge walking/jogging .....I reckon it's at least an 8 Mars bar course and definitely a full water bottle possibly two ...... ;¬)

It should be fun :) roll on November 28th !!! (yes it's going to be bloody cold too !!)


The trusty Pug passed it's MOT again :) although I will have to change a front ball joint at some point because there is a bit of movement in it..... although not bad enough to fail the car.....I'm not looking forward to that I remember how bad it was to change the last set.... although I will only have to replace one this time so not so bad I guess.... it even passed on it's emissions test, that was one thing I didn't expect it to pass on because the spring has lost it's springiness from under the mixture screw on the carburettor.... I was suspecting it would have altered it's mixture since it was last set by the other MOT garage.... but alas no.... it was actually under so it's probably running a little lean mixture wise....

Anyway nothing much else to report, Andrea is back at work today it's her inset day at school... the kids go back fairly soon now..... it's been a bloody awful summer probably the wettest I can ever remember, it's been like this for nearly three years on the trot... lets hope next summer proves a little more ... "summery"