Another glorious weekend of weather – that’s two good Bank Holiday’s in a row! Whatever next? I, and a handful of WSX people went down to Devon for the Tamar Triple, organised by Devon and Cornwall clubs.

The series of events started with a Sprint around Exeter University. It was very hot and sticky – building up to the massive thunderstorm that evening! I’m not a great runner at the best of times, and in the heat I’m even worse. But I didn’t fare too badly, coming 7th on Women Ultravets. Although looking at the map afterwards I could see where I could have taken a much shorter route choice to number 12. But, that’s the way things go on such an event – you have to make quick decisions and don’t always spot that tiny gap in the hedge that you could have got through (as was the case for leg 12 for me!)

Other top 10 results were: Agnes 6th on Junior Women, with Lyra coming 7th.

On day 2, the really tricky stuff started with the venue being Braunton Burrows. I’ve had disasters on this area before, and this was the case again on the Green course. Things weren’t going too badly until control 5 when I totally mis-read the lumps and bumps of the high dunes near the coast. My GPS watch recorded a ‘headless chicken’ series of circles and squiggles as I searched around the area and was just about to go out to the main path and try and re-locate (not easy) when I thought I’d try one final ‘bump’ that I hadn’t visited before. And there was my control! But I had lost about 12-13 minutes on that one control, which cost me dearly in terms of placings. I ended up 92nd out of 178. An indication of how difficult it was, was the fact that there were 18 ‘retired’ or ‘missed punches’ on that one course.

Other WSX results were: White – Esk 4th; Orange – Lyra 2nd, Arthur 9th; Short Green – Rebecca 51st (9 retired); Agnes – Green 151st, Nicci 152nd (they went round together after control 1!);  Jolyon – Blue 14th/143, Jon – 36th and Rob 46th.

Just completing the course without giving up was an achievement in itself – hence me listing everyone’s results!

So Day 3 came with a bit of trepidation on my part- although it was a Middle Distance race (i.e. shorter than the day before), half the climb and the scale of the map for my course was 1:7500, so it should be easier to read the details. So what could go wrong? Mmmm… quite a lot, actually. Again, the first few controls were OK-ish, though none of them I found spot on. But then from control 6 I just lost all sense and concentration and found myself searching around for my control in totally the wrong area, and in fact ended back at control 2 before I realised my error! My language was rather ripe at that moment, so hopefully nobody was around to hear it! From then on, I was basically rubbish. Even going round in a circle leaving control 11 and ending up back at the control! I then overshot control 12, finding 13 first. So a complete disaster, ending up 17th/28 on Women’s Ultravets. Not my finest hour! Especially as everyone else who had a bad run on the day before appeared to have a really successful run.

Other club members certainly did better than me:

Lyra – 2nd W12; Rebecca – 5th W40 (and SW Champ, I think!); Jolyon – 2nd M40.

Well done to everyone for completing some very tricky courses.

Coming up next is our Out-Of-Town Race at Canford Heath on Sunday, June 3rd. Entries are looking promising, so it should be a great day. If you haven’t entered yet, fabian4 is still open.

This is followed by an urban event at Ringwood on a new map. see Wimborne website for full details.