We stayed at a travellodge friday night, not fair from Saturdays event. The weather forecast for the day was promising snow and rain so we were bundled up for the worst. However when we arrived at ambelside the sun was shinning, however the muddy ground reminded us that could quickly change. The map we were running on was Loughrigg, which featured open moorland. It was fast and great visibility so key was to keep looking up. I ran the Women's A Course which was 4.9km with 12 controls.
I was expecting things to be a lot more technical and small mistakes to be punished quickly. However, I actually found this course to be quite easy and the slip up I had on control 9 was a mental block which I was able to easily find the root of after finishing and sort out since. I did have the luxury of starting 1 minute in front of Jessica Orr which meant the two of us were pushing each other around the course flip flopping who was leading. She got away when I slipped up on my compass coming out of 8, but I had a solid run afterwards as well which is nice to see that I can keep that pace even without someone around me. And I was able to finish just before the rain started!
The race wasn't over though! It was quickly off to the mini buses and winding our way through the country side on the hunt for showers and race to get dressed for the social that evening. The ceildh theme was "university city" and so in true EUOC style we topped every one showing up as Pandas in Kilts:
The Sunday was the relay. It took place at Bigland, open rolling fields with many rock walls and a quite technical section in the woods. Great for an exciting relay! Sadly because I was the only one from heriot-watt it was slightly less exciting but had a brilliant adhoc (no competitive) relay. I was tagged of by Laura Ramstein (she has run JWOC for Austria) into a lead of around 30seconds over the second Adhoc team. I had a generally clean run on the second leg:
Slight bobble going to control 2 just was too far left and had to come back at it. But once I got into the woods i was feeling on fire. Was just moving quite well, had a plan and was only hesitant in a few places. It was such a nice confidence booster to have a good run in a more technical area. And to come storming through the finish to tag off to peter G (old EUOC member who likes to think he is still a student :p). Peter G had a great run and like the EUOC girls we managed to beat the second Adhoc team by a few seconds. In the end EUOC girls swept the relay, the boys were 1st and 3rd (after a bit of drama over hoping uncrossable walls, KEY lesson: READ THE FINAL DETAILS!), and the adhoc team made it a clean sweep as really we were all EUOC.It was a lovely weekend spent with EUOC and i'm not hungry for next year. And I already have another runner from heriot-watt!
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