Snowy Ochils

31st December 2009

Snowy New Year's Eve outing from Dollar with JD.

It took almost 4 hours to complete an 8 mile circuit of King's Seat, Tarmangie and Whitewisp, wading through deep soft snow.

More photos | JD's photos

Christmas Day in the Lakes

My first walk up a hill since Nepal more than a month ago. Felt good to be out, especially on such a stunning morning with hardly anyone around.

White Christmas

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Labels

I've decided to start using labels in this blog. It took me blummin ages to figure out why the labels weren't appearing at the bottom of each post, despite selecting Layout > Page Elements > Blog Posts > Edit, and checking 'Labels:' under Post Page Options. I then tried rebuilding the entire blog from the original Minima template, and the labels still didn't appear. It was driving me nuts until I tried Layout > Edit HTML > Revert widget templates to default, and bingo the labels were there! Obvious really.

I've created an enormous heap of labels now. You can see them if you scroll down the righthand controls. These labels make it easier to find old race reports and similar posts, and also to spot which races are missing. For example the label Pentland Skyline shows my Skyline posts since 2005 at http://chrisupson.blogspot.com/search/label/Pentland Skyline. You can see 2008 is missing since I had a rubbish run, so I didn't bother writing it up afterwards.

Likewise for the label Nepal, you can find my various Nepal ramblings here, although I still haven't added any photos for the 2008 Langtang/Chitwan trip. http://chrisupson.blogspot.com/search/label/Nepal

I've also noticed that loads of the external links are broken in old posts due to website demise or restructuring.

Taking stock

Having been ill for around a month now means I haven't run or raced since the Scottish National Cross Country Relays back in October at Cumbernauld, and in fact running and exercise have slipped off my radar altogether for now. Looking longer term, I hope to be back racing in 2010.

In 2009 I managed 74 races but without any exceptional results.

In 2010, if I can get my act together, I would like to clock a useful marathon PB and perhaps get a bit quicker on the road. I also hope to complete a large number of long hill races, but more for fun than expecting to get any decent results.

Overseas, I would like to run the GR20 in Corsica again, for example in June 2010, or perhaps to hike a long section of the GR11 in the Pyrenees, or maybe try the complete route from Atlantic to Mediterranean which should take about 3 weeks, but might be tricky to organise logistically.

West District Cross Country

5th December 2009

Photos: men's race | women's race

Men's results | Women's results

It's been several weeks I've felt ill with sinusitis, so I missed running the West Districts at Irvine Moor, electing instead to take a few photos.

Both senior races went right down to the wire. In the women's event the early group of 5 or 6 runners was whittled down to 2 by halfway around the 2nd lap with Springburn's Danielle Brown poised on the shoulder of Glasgow AC's Nicola Hood patiently waiting to make her move until the finishing straight, and clinching the win by a single second.

The men's race was even closer with less than a second separating the first 2 athletes. Shettleston's Eritrean duo of Tsegai Tewelde and Teweldeberhan Mengisteab both crossed the line in an equal time of 30:24 for the 9.8km route. The 2 athletes had run the final lap pace for pace with less than a stride length separating them, and neither athlete altered their step as they appeared to jog into the finishing funnel, making it all look very easy!