Monday Night Fun Running

Course Setter - Marta Salek

The Story so Far...

It was clear from the phone calls for advice and support that Marta put a huge amount of thought and effort into producing the night's event - running a park-street Hageby (ie 3 loops) required a level of effort not normally found among our recent training events. While we do not encourage folks to expend a lot of effort on our low-key training nights, let's always recognise that some want to try out a new idea and are happy to put the effort in to do so - and in such circumstances it behoves us to accept the challenge and do our best to make the idea work as well as possible.

In reality, the primary concern expressed by most folks was about starting in the middle of a large park - and, recognising that it was quite dark in that area, Marta had sensibly put the start location under the huge (and bright) lights of the tennis court - this was certainly worthwhile as they provided a well-needed beacon to those returning to finish or to the start location for another map. As an additional safety precaution, Marta also extended the time by 10 minutes and encouraged everybody to walk with care through the park area - something which most of us did as we discovered that our puny headlamps don't really light up the way ahead all that well.

Congratulations Marta - an excellent concept and a set of maps that we should save for a Saturday morning run - as this area and the concept used would make an excellent 90 minute event for one of our training mornings. I enjoyed it thoroughly - even the bit where I decided to follow the tracks marked on the map - only to discover that there are now many more than shown - causing momentary confusion as I returned to the finish.

Highlights

• Louise is sick (overuse injury) - her farrier advises her not to run for a week or so
• Mark B. is overseas (Marta is doing Wednesday night scoring for the next 6-8 weeks - so be nice to her).
• Peter Maloney finds the start location (and starts only 29 minutes late)
• Two unnamed people didn't put their names on their cards (Reg and David B - oops sorry, never could keep a secret!!)
• Marta gets the lot
• Pat Miller dominates power walking class - with 98 points
• Ian Greenwood still AWOL - expects to be back in 2-3 weeks
• As I punched #10, a lady was putting her bins out - and when I told her that we were running a night orienteering course she replied "Oh you poor dears...." (although, I'm not sure if that was a comment on the terrain, the cold evening or our likely state of mind in taking part in such an obviously ludicrous venture). 

Feedback

None so far - strangely quiet

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