Crawley

Saturday, and one was adventure racing in some forest neat Bracknell, as part of a joint effort with my brother ('Team Low Fliers'). Adventure Racing, of course, is a combination of running, mountain biking, and orienteering, with the occasional other challenge thrown in to make it that little bit more, well, interesting. Some Adventure Races have a kayaking section as well, but not always. Races can go on for several days, although ours was only a quick 5-hour jaunt around the forest. That's not to say that it was easy, it was a pretty intense 5 hours...

Race conditions were pretty warm but wet – we've had some quite heavy rain in the last week, although it only rained for about 20 minutes on the day. We spent a lot of time trying to avoid puddles, not because we were worried about getting muddy but because it is seldom sensible to ride a bike at speed into puddles in a sandy forest. We did pretty well and made each of the 20 checkpoints, but then a navigational frak up on the way back got us pretty lost, and we eventually ended up about three miles away from where we needed to be. It's easy to get lost in the forest. Luckily we were on bikes, so we raced back (technically illegal to race on public roads in the UK) and made it through the gate with five minutes to spare.

Most of the checkpoints are just little stamps with which you punch distinctively patterned marks into your scorecard, but five of the checkpoints had extra challenges on them. Mostly they were pretty simple things like cross a rope bridge, carry a bucket without spilling the contents, follow a rope blindfold and walk on these big skis for 20 meters. One checkpoint – checkpoint E – had us walking through a waist deep pond carrying our bikes. You didn't have to carry them out of the water but most people did.... it sounds really horrible, and although the water was dark it wasn't cold, and there wasn't much in the way of undergrowth. It was pretty easy to get across, and not altogether unpleasant.

All in all we had an awesome good time, and I'm planning on entering a second one later on this year, either at the end of August or beginning of September. Not sure yet if my brother will come or if I'm going solo...


And that would be me by my bike, wearing one of our v. cool home made t-shirts.

I crashed once during the race. We came down a hill pretty fast, and then noticed a big puddle at the bottom. Dave went round it to the right, and I went to the left, aiming for this little track which I'd seen. I noticed too late that it was a tractor track, a deep, steep-sided puddle created by some tractor. Not good – my front wheel bumped something and hit the side, throwing me to the left. I put my foot out to stop the fall but my leg folded under me, and I skidded to an abrupt halt kinda twisted up in my bike, somehow. I'm sure you all know that feeling of relief you get when you check your leg and realise that nothing is broken or dislocated this time and you're all OK. I landed on soft mud so didn't even get a scratch, just a strain on my knee and a bruise on my ankle where the frame hit me.

I wasn't feeling 100% on Sunday, but was feeling good enough to run the prestigious Crawley 10k run. On the whole Crawley sucks but there is a good 10k race. I didn't know it was good until this morning, but I think it is one of the coolest I've run in. The run goes almost entirely though Tilgate Forest, with some pretty good hill stretches to run up. Most of the runners were doing it in regular running shoes, but I've got my off-road background and did it in some nice, grippy off-road shoes. I found that when we got to puddles or muddy patches I could race right across them, whereas the rest of the crowd where had to slow down and work there way round them. I crossed the finish line 55 minutes and 9 seconds after I started – not bad considering I was running injured.

So that was my exciting weekend.



The Adventure Race organisers gave out this groovy bit of headwear.

Isa Guha also had an exciting weekend, taking 5-14 (5 bowled out, 14 runs conceded) against the West Indies in the second of the recent ODI series on Saturday. The first of the ODI matches on Friday had looked a bit more promising for the tourists until heavy rain led to the abandonment of the match with England on 156-4 (156 runs, 4 batters out). The second match did not go well for the Windies at all, with them all out for only 41. England soon got the 42 they needed, winning the match by ten full wickets and taking the series 1-0.


England captain Charlotte Edwards in full flight against the Windies. She made 50 in the first match - her 30th international 50, which is pretty impressive.

England Women's Cricket team are really doing well at the moment, despite playing less often than the chaps do. I think that this is because unlike the men's teams, which are usually overworked and constantly under attack from an hostile press, the women's teams don't play so much and the press pretty much leave them alone.

A quiet weekend this week – I stayed in on Saturday and made a point of not having anything to drink. It was a genuinely satisfying venture: I managed to tidy my room, finish the second draft of this short-story I've been trying to work on since February, and finish the b3ta version of a running website:
Our running website
The website needs more feedback and input from the adrgnr team, but at least it doesn't look as crappy as it did last week. It's php based and written using the Eclipse PDT tool, not that anyone is fussed about these nörtti details.

I spent the whole of Saturday night being creative, and was up until 6am.

I got this completely awesome hat from the shop on Saturday. You can do that when you aren't doing anything else. This is what freedom is about.

I was out in the forest on Sunday afternoon. I'm in an Adventure Race in two weeks time with my brother, and these are practice runs. I think that my practice has paid off – I can control the bike over the rougher terrain a lot smoother than I could, and I have a better feel for the bike as well. I came back with about 45 pictures from the forest, 5 of which are worth sharing with people. I don't want to post loads of pictures in one entry, so I'll post the rest of them next week or something.

The Ants were out in force in the forest today, and there were some parts where the path was like a little moving carpet. Usually I didn't see them until the bike was just about to go over them. I don't know how many I took out today, I suspect that having a tyre roll across them doesn't hurt that much, they certainly didn't seem to mind.

It's been one of those weekends where I didn't really get the chance to stop and do very little.

I stayed in on Friday night and worked on this website for this run which my brother and I are doing in October. If you've never hand-coded a website before, you might not realise how long it can take – it's at about 4 hours work so far. I could just use a website editor, but I'd rather not. I used to make websites for a living, and I find working with code pretty therapeutic. It's like clay to me.

So Saturday night was a trip to Brighton with a friend from work. There isn't much to report from it: we went to one nice venue, and the rest were all straight ones. That's mostly because one of the guys who turned up wasn't so keen on gay venues. I'm getting slightly vexed with Brighton: every time I go to Brighton I go with straight people to straight places, and while there is nothing wrong with that, why go to Brighton at all??

So that was disappointing, but at least nobody died.

Deep in Tilgate Forest. Tilgate Forest is the forest just to the south of Crawley. It used to be part of a massive estate, but now it's just a small area outside of Crawley. I spent maybe an hour cruising round the forest – there are some nice, and some pretty tricky trails in the forest. There are still a few puddles, and the mud in them is deadly: because the soil round here is fine and a bit sandy it turns into quicksand when it gets wet. The puddles trap you, it's almost impossible to bounce straight through them, like I would do when I lived in Bedfordshire. Bedfordshire is mostly clay, so puddles are easier up there!

My problem with puddles is exacerbated by the tyres on the bike. I still have the shop fitted tyres, and of course, most people who buy MTBs use them for a few weeks in the summer and never go off-road, so shops fit budget rate road-tyres.

Looking back across Crawley. I like that in this picture you can't really see the town, although you are looking that way.

I have a problem with my brakes as well. For the same reason that that tyres are a bit weak, the brake blocks didn't last that well either. I've had the bike about 5 months, and the brake blocks are pretty dead. They gave up on me while I was in the forest trying to get down a really thin, quite steep trail – not the best time for brakes to get a bit flaky. So there are a couple of things which I need to fix before July 12th.

The Ant. There are lots on ants in Tilgate Forest.