A surprisingly dry run at the Concorde Chase at Hawley and Hornley today – it threw it down as we drove back home so counted ourselves very lucky.

The event was in an area used for Army training and it was a bit unnerving to see a last-minute hand-written note in the Pre-Start box that “Troops are in the area”.

It was great to have just an A4 map – much easier to handle than the A3 – and I set off with high hopes. The forests were pretty runnable although there were also many paths and tracks which were sometimes the better option. After messing up control 2 – stopping FAR to soon along a track to go in and find my control – the rest of my run was fairly error free. Having said that I, and many others (including Gavin Clegg!), messed up getting from the last control to the Finish.

My finish time was 30 seconds over the hour, for a 5.2k course, so I was quite pleased with that. When the results came through I ended up 33/100 and 3rd out of 12 on W60 – so I was happy with that – especially as I beat a few rivals who normally beat me.

A very satisfying day.