On sunday the 21st october, a team of 10 pfo juniors went up to caldbeck to represent the club in the annual yvette baker trophy event, for club juniors. it is an interclub event, where juniors from each club race against juniors from half a dozen other clubs.
this year, on a whole, we did not do as well as previously, and may miss out on the national final. the main reason for this was the relative inexperience of some of the newer runbeers, and also the fact that many of the team members had been away on a physically draining north west junior squad training day on saturday.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Injury :(
Since the training weekend detailed below I have had pain in my right knee. It wasn't too painful, so I rested it by not training at all for a week. The following weekend was the British School's Score Championships. My knee had settled down a bit after a weeks rest so I ran at the Score Champs (coming 4th in Boy's Year 12/13). BRGS Upper School Boy's Team won the trophy :) (best 6 scores from years 10-13 counting).
However after the minibus journey home from Sussex my knee was painful again. So I rested it again and went to see a physiotherapist. She diagnosed that my knee cap was rubbing, as it was not moving correctly up and down its groove in my femur. This was due to the fact that my quads were overdeveloped on the outside of my thigh and underdeveloped on the inside. This caused my knee cap to be pulled diagonally to the outside as opposed to the inside.
To counteract this I have to do squats on one leg and weights in the gym to build up the inside of my thigh as well as resting from training/running for two weeks. At the moment my right leg diameter measures one inch less than my left both above and below my knee. By the time I go back for a check with my physio in two weeks I need to have built up the muscle mass and have equal diameters on both legs!
I'm doing all the prescribed exercises and hoping to be fit again for the next NWJS training weekend and Delamere Forest event early in November.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Fundraising
The North West Junior Squad try to raise money throughout the year. They do this mainly by having cake stalls at major orienteering events in the North West Region. Juniors (or their parents and grandparents!) bake cakes, buns and biscuits and bring them to the events to be sold. The juniors also help to man the cake stall and sell the cakes before and after their runs. There is usually a hungry crowd of people wanting to buy cakes after they have run their courses. Some buy cakes to take home as well. Home made jams and chutney are also sold at certain times of year.
The cake stall money is used for many of the North West Junior Squad expenses. Part of it is used to help subside the Norway trip and helps towards the cost of Norway Tour Tops.
From September 2005 to August 2006 the cake stalls raised £1999. From Sept 2006 to August 2007 they raised £1694.
This year the squad is having a stall at a Dickensian Christmas Market in the Lake District to sell home made mince pies etc. A stall at a similar market in 2005 raised £937 from the sale of cakes, jams etc.
Fund raising for the Norway tour helps to reduce the cost to each squad member going. Some of the other ways the squad are raising money for Norway 2008 are :-selling quiz sheets, bag packing at local supermarkets, selling cake recipe books, selling home made Christmas cakes .
Monday, October 1, 2007
NWJS weekend 29/30th September (2)
Saturday:
The training is detailed in Alex's contribution but I would like to add that for me aswell the time trial was very wierd on that map, also I developed a syndrome of getting to right on top of the flag and then not being able to see it for a minute or so and as this happened on 3 controls I wasted approximately 2 and a half minutes (out of 11:19), the fact that we were using training flags placed on the floor and not full size flags was most of the problem.
The rest of the training was good though and the two techniques of simplification and attack points were reinforced by well planned routes to get the most out of the terrain.
Sunday:
On Sunday the whole club attended the BL Regional Event located at HIgh Pike in the Lakes. The location was great and the open fell land gave way to fast times and there was also a good network of paths but fine details close to the controls needed particular attention meaning that the Saturdays training was put into good practice. The weather was good and although not the brightest or hottest day, there was no rain and gave some extremely good conditions to run in.
I ran the JM5L course and found that it was extremely fast running, mistakes cost a large amount of time as you could run straight past a control hidden in a dip, or not run far enough and hit a wrong parrallel (sp?) feature. I only made a single mistake over the whole 8.1km of the course and this was on control 15 were I found an unmarked marsh in a re-entrant almost the same as my control just 100m ahead.
The enjoyable part of this race was the fact that for once I got to stretch out my legs for large sections and as such completed the course in just over an hour only just behind the leader (54mins approx). I believe that I could have run faster I think if it hadn't have been for the trouble of getting to sleep the night before with some of the younger members of the club thinking it funny to annoy everyone else instead of going to sleep, resulting in me being very tired for the event.
Overall this should be a gold standard leaving me just one more to get before the end of the year.
Liam
The training is detailed in Alex's contribution but I would like to add that for me aswell the time trial was very wierd on that map, also I developed a syndrome of getting to right on top of the flag and then not being able to see it for a minute or so and as this happened on 3 controls I wasted approximately 2 and a half minutes (out of 11:19), the fact that we were using training flags placed on the floor and not full size flags was most of the problem.
The rest of the training was good though and the two techniques of simplification and attack points were reinforced by well planned routes to get the most out of the terrain.
Sunday:
On Sunday the whole club attended the BL Regional Event located at HIgh Pike in the Lakes. The location was great and the open fell land gave way to fast times and there was also a good network of paths but fine details close to the controls needed particular attention meaning that the Saturdays training was put into good practice. The weather was good and although not the brightest or hottest day, there was no rain and gave some extremely good conditions to run in.
I ran the JM5L course and found that it was extremely fast running, mistakes cost a large amount of time as you could run straight past a control hidden in a dip, or not run far enough and hit a wrong parrallel (sp?) feature. I only made a single mistake over the whole 8.1km of the course and this was on control 15 were I found an unmarked marsh in a re-entrant almost the same as my control just 100m ahead.
The enjoyable part of this race was the fact that for once I got to stretch out my legs for large sections and as such completed the course in just over an hour only just behind the leader (54mins approx). I believe that I could have run faster I think if it hadn't have been for the trouble of getting to sleep the night before with some of the younger members of the club thinking it funny to annoy everyone else instead of going to sleep, resulting in me being very tired for the event.
Overall this should be a gold standard leaving me just one more to get before the end of the year.
Liam
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