My very first Orient Earrings

Its been a little hectic at Chez Rons with some very sad news disrupting the last couple of weeks. Father in Law passed away last weekend and I'll miss his advice on hydration and nutrition. Lots of things have had to go by the wayside as we try and cope with the loss and also get lives back on track after what has been a difficult few months.

The old man was very proud of my efforts to bring home the Olympic bacon and I know he'll be watching me as I climb the rostrum to collect my medal in 2012.

Training has obviously been disrupted but we did have a family bonding session at the Wedding Day 7K when me, Haille Minogue, the Droog - yep she pulled on her pumps - and The Sod lined up to start the race. The Droog is not as experienced an athlete so it was a Droog/Ron bonding opportunity not to be missed! We crossed the line together in 46 minutes 39 seconds - not my best round there but there again I wasn't nailed to a cash drainer last time.

An emotional evening for the Ron brood lightened by the looks on fellow competitors faces when Haille burst into tears and they thought it was because she hadn't won!

Tuesday evening I went out running with The Old People of Hastings. Highly embarrassing end to the evening when, within 5 minutes of the finish, I suffered a mega cramp attack in my calf. When I'd recovered I discovered I was lost - and it took me 30 minutes to find my way back to the Transit. Such is life on the treadmill of life of an Olympic athlete.

Today I had my first experience of Orient Earrings. In case you've never heard of it its a sport that combines running with getting lost. Right up my street I thought. So off we went to take part in the Ightam, Seal Knole Long Trail Challenge. Run over 7K, 14K or 21K and with a course set through the forests near to and within the Knole Estate. Oh - and the course isn't marked - you have to use map reading skills to visit a series of checkpoints. When you reach the check point you stick your finger into a hole with a thing called a dibber stuck on the end of your finger. Miss a checkpoint or don't visit them in the correct order and you're out of the race.

All seemed set for a pleasant morning's run.

We probably didn't endear ourselves to the Orient Earrings regulars. To begin with we couldn't find the bally race headquarters - not a great start really. Thankfully we weren't alone in having problems locating the start.

The scary bit though was looking at the other participants - they had leg coverings, special shoes, torches, whistles, compass, route markings sellotaped to their arms. The Half Share and I had nothing but pumps, a tshirt and a packet of fruit pastiles.

Oh. And the map reading bit. The Half Share struggles to make her way to the kitchen without getting lost - and don't event go there with the left/right business.

So, the morning was spent in the company of a load of runners getting lost - but getting lost quickly. As it happens we didn't do half bad - the 14K took us three or four minutes less than the cut-off time of three hours. But we managed to get to every checkpoint in order and although our time may seem slow we still finished the race ahead of a load of people who had missed checkpoints - and even after a couple of sherbs in the pub, runners were still making it back to the finish - and full of admiration for our speedy traversing of the course.

I await the results with anticipation.

Keep on tapering

Ron