Wales

Pwll Du, Nr Abergavenny, Wales.

The Terrain:

"Both the individual and the relay days used Pwll Du, an area of open hillside to the south and extensive old opencast workings to the north. The longest courses had challenging route choices and a plethora of small control sites to test the most accurate navigation.
The area was largely runnable with no brambles or gorse. The only impediment to fast running is heather and tussock grass, which occurs in some areas. In addition, the longer courses on the individual day used the Blorenge, forming an easterly extension to Pwll Du. It waslargely heather moorland with some bilberry and many scattered boulders."

The nice technical bit

The Individual:

I was really looking forward to the technical area of Pwll Du, but once you ran from the start kite over the top of the hill you realised that the ground and terrain was going to be horrible. Basically a mixture of tussocks, marsh and nasty bits of heather and grass that roll your ankles made it very hard to run, even on the paths.

The boring unrunnable bit

I made the mistake of not retiring my old VJ Falcons after the 10Mila and decided to run in them again...little did I know that my studs were going to go through the sole and damage my feet on the way round - at pretty much the furthest point round I was in agony - off the pace anyway due to being rubbish at 2 controls (missing them by 5meters and not seeing the flag!!) but yeah I didn't enjoy it one bit. The moor on the far side of the road was as boring as hell and the map and control sites (i thought) were pretty rubbish. If they'd have looped us around the technical area I would have enjoyed it more - but would have probably got dizzy - and this would have also ruined the relays - which were amazing!

The relay spectator control area

A crap run to finish the season - a little disappointing for me but hey, I feel more of a middle distance runner at the moment anyway. There is always next season!

The Relay:

I had a pretty good run on the sunday and managed to get round in 46.00 for the 6.5km course... I spiked 20/22 controls and felt really good even though my feet felt like they could fall off... the new OLWAY Tigers I'd bought were actualy amazing - i'd recommend them to everyone!

The rest of the relays...

I think the following images sum it up really.

1st: SYO1, 2nd: ShUOC, 3rd: CLOK

1st: ShUOC, 2nd: SYO1, 3rd: SYO2

Sheffield Rule the moors!