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I was racing up the steep hill in the forest, behind two girls in green tops from the Hayward Harriers. They had just overtaken me at the bottom of the last hill. Now we were five meters into the up slope of the next hill and the girls were starting to feel it. This hill is steep!

They say that it isn't the night before a race which is the most important night for resting, but the night before that. Two nights before I'd been out in Soho, London, with my good friend Toni. We'd started at Trash Palace, which is a gay bar in London. We had a bit to drink there before heading onto the Popstarz nightclub up by Centre Point, where we had still more to drink and danced A LOT. We finally stopped dancing at 3am. I had to go then anyway to get the last train back to home, finally getting home at about 5.30. I think I made about 4 hours of broken sleep before a friend called me up and called me out for lunch downtown. I was feeling a bit fragile, to say the least, but a nice hot bath and along leisurely lunch sorted that out.


I used to work with this cheeky chap, but he left the company so that he could travel. He's been round most of Eastern Europe already, now he wants to go to Africa.

I had a quieter night on Saturday. I stayed in and drank wine, watched DVDs and generally chilled out until about 1 in the morning. I was flipping through this month's copy of Runner's World when I saw that there was another race in Crawley on Sunday morning, billed as the Crawley Saints and Sinners 5+ Mile run, through Tilgate Forest. I had to go. It was not negotiable.

Tilgate Forest is my forest. I've spent enough time in it this year to know the major paths and the major hills, so looking at the route map beforehand I could see what the best strategy for getting round the course would be. I'm also the kind of runner who enjoys running up hills: I love the mental discipline you need to get up then, and I love the careful technical approach that you need as well. To get hills right you need to know when to push yourself, when you are going to recover, what pace to take the hill at, and you really need to be able to force yourself to keep going until you get to the top. It helps a lot if you know how many hills there are and how long they are though.

When I got to the track I was one of only a very few runners not in team uniform, so I was expecting to get my butt kicked by all these team guys. Annoying, but what the heck, I didn't have to worry about siblings, colleagues or friends seeing me coming in right at the end so I figured I could just relax and enjoy the run without worrying about time or position. I started fairly far back in the pack.

Races from the K2 stadium in Crawley quickly get into the forest and you spend the first mile or two mostly trooping uphill. Right from the off I was overtaking other runners who were having trouble getting up the hills or cutting across muddy areas – just like last week, nearly everyone else was running in regular road shoes, which gave me another small advantage.

Of course, it's a bit of fun really, and does nothing more than satisfy my competitive instincts. I got back in 40m 56s. That's 8m 7s per mile. Only three months ago I was finishing 5km races through town at 8m 31s per mile. Longer and harder races at a faster rate – that's not just a bit of fun, that's a genuine improvement in personal fitness**.

That afternoon saw Lewis Hamilton having a similarly good race at Hockenheim in the German GP. The start of the race was uneventful with Lewis way ahead, but a bad call by the team while the safety car was out saw the boy wonder drop to fifth place. Hamilton put in some good, solid laps and made a couple of neat overtakes to get his first place back and win the race – outstanding.

A friend* had sent me a link to s site which had a clever but simple instructions to make a camera mount for a bike, and I just had enough time after the race to rush out to the forest and shoot a couple of clips on it. The films aren't that watchable at the moment – the bike bounces around and swings from side to side so much that it is pretty hard to make out much of what is going on. But I did see four Red Deer in the forest, which was nice. I'll try and make something watchable out of the clips over the next few days, in the meantime here's one I made earlier:



It's a pretty short clip, taken from about 15 minutes worth of clips I'd done that day from around town. I'm wondering if for road biking I could make the films look even faster by mounting the camera lower down.

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**I weigh myself every day, and in the last week have put on about 1.5 kilos. I think that's because I've gotten myself some extra muscle in my legs from all of the hills in the Adventure Racing the week before.

*A friend from MyOpera, no less!

And yet more racing

About six weeks ago I got roped into this project to arrange some stupid go-karting thing for the Kråli and Brighton offices in July. I'm not a big fan of go-karting, but I am a good Company Girl so I went and did it. I advertised it, collected money, got discounts and things. I didn't want to drive in it but being the perfect hostess I really rather had to.


Numero kuusi kulmassa nopeasti

I'm just back from the racing the now. I came about last, and whilst I could have done without the driving, didn't have a bad time.

Forest Racing

Saturday, and one was adventure racing in some forest neat Bracknell, as part of a joint effort with my brother ('Team Low Fliers'). Adventure Racing, of course, is a combination of running, mountain biking, and orienteering, with the occasional other challenge thrown in to make it that little bit more, well, interesting. Some Adventure Races have a kayaking section as well, but not always. Races can go on for several days, although ours was only a quick 5-hour jaunt around the forest. That's not to say that it was easy, it was a pretty intense 5 hours...

Race conditions were pretty warm but wet – we've had some quite heavy rain in the last week, although it only rained for about 20 minutes on the day. We spent a lot of time trying to avoid puddles, not because we were worried about getting muddy but because it is seldom sensible to ride a bike at speed into puddles in a sandy forest. We did pretty well and made each of the 20 checkpoints, but then a navigational frak up on the way back got us pretty lost, and we eventually ended up about three miles away from where we needed to be. It's easy to get lost in the forest. Luckily we were on bikes, so we raced back (technically illegal to race on public roads in the UK) and made it through the gate with five minutes to spare.

Most of the checkpoints are just little stamps with which you punch distinctively patterned marks into your scorecard, but five of the checkpoints had extra challenges on them. Mostly they were pretty simple things like cross a rope bridge, carry a bucket without spilling the contents, follow a rope blindfold and walk on these big skis for 20 meters. One checkpoint – checkpoint E – had us walking through a waist deep pond carrying our bikes. You didn't have to carry them out of the water but most people did.... it sounds really horrible, and although the water was dark it wasn't cold, and there wasn't much in the way of undergrowth. It was pretty easy to get across, and not altogether unpleasant.

All in all we had an awesome good time, and I'm planning on entering a second one later on this year, either at the end of August or beginning of September. Not sure yet if my brother will come or if I'm going solo...


And that would be me by my bike, wearing one of our v. cool home made t-shirts.

I crashed once during the race. We came down a hill pretty fast, and then noticed a big puddle at the bottom. Dave went round it to the right, and I went to the left, aiming for this little track which I'd seen. I noticed to late that it was a tractor track, a deep, steep-sided puddle created by some tractor. Not good – my front wheel bumped something and hit the side, throwing my to the left. I put my foot out to stop the fall but it folded under me, and I skidded to a rather abrupt halt. I'm sure you all know that feeling of relief when you check your leg and realise that nothing is broken or dislocated. I landed on soft mud so didn't even get a scratch, just a bit of a strain on my knee and a bruise on my ankle where the frame had hit me.

I wasn't feeling 100% on Sunday, but was feeling good enough to run the prestigious Crawley 10k run. On the whole Crawley sucks but there is a good 10k race. I didn't know it was good until this morning, but I think it is one of the coolest I've run in. The run goes almost entirely though Tilgate Forest, with some pretty good hill stretches to run up. Most of the runners were doing it in regular running shoes, but I've got my off-road background and did it in some nice, grippy off-road shoes. I found that when we got to puddles or muddy patches I could race right across them, whereas the rest of the crowd where had to slow down and work there way round them. I crossed the finish line 55 minutes and 9 seconds after I started – not bad considering I was running injured.

So that was my exciting weekend.



The Adventure Race organisers gave out this groovy bit of headwear.

Isa Guha also had an exciting weekend, taking 5-14 (5 bowled out, 14 runs conceded) against the West Indies in the second of the recent ODI series on Saturday. The first of the ODI matches on Friday had looked a bit more promising for the tourists until heavy rain led to the abandonment of the match with England on 156-4 (156 runs, 4 batters out). The second match did not go well for the Windies at all, with them all out for only 41. England soon got the 42 they needed, winning the match by ten full wickets and taking the series 1-0.


England captain Charlotte Edwards in full flight against the Windies. She made 50 in the first match - her 30th international 50, which is pretty impressive.

England Women's Cricket team are really doing well at the moment, despite playing less often than the chaps do. I think that this is because unlike the men's teams, which are usually overworked and constantly under attack from an hostile press, the women's teams don't play so much and the press pretty much leave them alone.

Love

I was hanging out with a couple of my girl-friends on the on the floor. We were sitting around on cushions at Sandy's place, me, Sandy and Anke. The alarm on my phone went off, it took me by surprise. This stupid tune, but so loud, so loud that I had to turn it off right away.

I pulled the phone out from my pocket. The screen was blank, and the phone was silent, but the alarm carried on. Anke said that it may be her phone, as she also has a Samsung phone. I reached my hand up the back of her shirt, looking for her phone. I stroked my hand up and down the smooth skin on her back, which was nice. Anke took out her phone and checked it, but it was not her phone either, and the ringing, the overpowering, crushing ringing of the alarm, carried on. The noise was coming from my phone, my real phone, calling me out of my dreams and into the real world. It was 6.20 in the morning. I was laying alone in a strange bed. It was raining hard outside, and I had to get up and get dressed to go out and run 8 miles.

22 hours earlier, the very same telephone had called me awake far less dramatically. I hadn't been dreaming, only slumbering, and it wasn't the alarm, it was a call from my mother to let me know that they were on their way over, and they would be about two hours. I pulled myself out of bed, and went through my morning routine.

My parents were picking me up on the way to a family party in the New Forest. It was my aunt and uncle's 50th Wedding Anniversary.

I can't imagine being in love any more, let alone being in love for 50 years.


50 years

But it's always nice to meet up with family. I meet my cousins every two years or so. There is one of my cousins who, despite meeting up with him every two years or so, I've never known what he actually did, in fact I don't think that I've even spoken to him before. I did that. I spoke to him. I got to know him a bit.

He has been with his partner for 18 years.

I can't imagine being in love for 18 years.



Sunday morning, and I was out running across the New Forest with my brother. We left at 6.30 in the morning in light rain which got progressively heavier as we were out. 8 miles later and it was coming down pretty hard.

The New Forest is a nice place, although popular with tourists. There aren't that many trees, apparently that's because the soil isn't very good and they don't grow easy, but there are a lot of ponies. Popular tradition has it that the wild ponies scattered in the desolate parts of Great Britain swam ashore from the wrecked ships of the Spanish Armada, but apparently that's not actually true.


The top which I wear for running in the rain used to be a snug fit, now it's really loose. Where did I go?

The best man from the wedding was also there, and pointed out that the two of them actually picked a terrible date to get married, and that they should have done it a week later. This weekend was the British Grand Prix, The London Pride March, the start of the Tour de France (my uncle and his best man are keen cyclists). Not to mention the Wimbledon finals! Shame about the F1, which I gather was a thrilling race, but the rest was OK: I'm not a big fan of road cycling or tennis, and I'm going to Amsterdam Pride in a month anyway. :D

Metsäkuvat

What is it about forests? I love being in the forest, surrounded by the trees, watching the ants and hearing the animals, far from civilisation. I must be some kind of hippy.


Grebe on the lake in Tilgate Park

So, I was out biking in Tilgate Forest – the only good thing about Kråli – on Sunday, and I was coming down one of the slopes on this trail. I've called it the “Deer Loops” trail because I saw a deer in the area not long ago, and because the trail loops around several times. I saw a biker ahead of me, and it's a pretty narrow trail so of course I stopped to say 'hey'. His friend was just a few moments behind him, and we got talking. I mentioned that I was out in the forest by myself, and sometimes got a bit concerned that I'd hit a tree at speed, and end up unconscious and alone. A fair point, I think. If I could choose where I will die then it would probably be in a forest, but not just yet....


The trail goes into this. I love that you can only see a metre ahead

Actually, I'm not keen on the idea of dying in Kråli either, not even Tilgate Forest. Of all the places to spend the last of my days.


Trees in the Cherry Plantation, in Tilgate Forest

“What a strange place to meet other mountain-bikers” I said to Karen and Jim, my new friends. Then we realised that actually it's the best place to meet bikers. After all, you just don't know how seriously into off-roading people cyclists in other places are, do you? So I guess on the trail is the obvious place you'd meet other crossers.

Anyway, we swapped numbers with and headed off into the green. It was a sunny day and there were a few other people about, mostly on the larger trails. There were a few people on horses, a lot of pedestrians, and a couple of brave (or foolish) women out on road bikes without skid-lids on.

I feel sad for Tilgate Forest. It's a small forest, and it has a motorway and a railway going through it, along with two chains of pylons. But it's the only forest I've got.

Quiet

A quiet weekend this week – I stayed in on Saturday and made a point of not having anything to drink. It was a genuinely satisfying venture: I managed to tidy my room, finish the second draft of this short-story I've been trying to work on since February, and finish the b3ta version of a running website:

Our running site

The website needs more feedback and input from the adrgnr team, but at least it doesn't look as crappy as it did last week. It's php based and written using the Eclipse PDT tool, not that anyone is fussed about these nörtti details.

I spent the whole of Saturday night being creative, and was up until 6am.



I got this completely awesome hat from the shop on Saturday. You can do that when you aren't doing anything else. This is what freedom is about.



I was out in the forest on Sunday afternoon. I'm in an Adventure Race in two weeks time with my brother, and these are practice runs. I think that my practice has paid off – I can control the bike over the rougher terrain a lot smoother than I could, and I have a better feel for the bike as well. I came back with about 45 pictures from the forest, 5 of which are worth sharing with people. I don't want to post loads of pictures in one entry, so I'll post the rest of them next week or something.



The Ants were out in force in the forest today, and there were some parts where the path was like a little moving carpet. Usually I didn't see them until the bike was just about to go over them. I don't know how many I took out today, I suspect that having a tyre roll across them doesn't hurt that much, they certainly didn't seem to mind.

The difference a night can make

On Friday night I posted this slightly naff review of the last 12 months, and I posted it as a list of points that had or hadn't changed during the last year. I only posted it on the My Opera blog, because it refers to that blog.

I think that I need to review some of the points made in that post:

My secundigravida friend is no longer secundigravida. As of 19.57 (Finn time) on the 21st June she is the proud mother of Daniel Andrew. 3200 g, healthy and happy – congratulations to Vicky and James.

One of the people who I no longer talk to got in touch unexpectedly. I wish she hadn't, but she was a good friend once. I'll see how it goes, if it doesn't work out then I can stop talking to her again.

She's got this stupid idea that I'm going to get back with my ex... I don't know where or why she thinks that I would do that, it really isn't going to happen.
And thirdly....

My straight friend who I went out with last weekend is an excellent fellow. I don't exactly push straight people to come to gay venues, but I do think it would be nice if just occasionally the friends who drag me out with them to straght venues would actually consider coming out to one of our places. They usually refuse - what exactly do they think is going to happen? The friend I went out in Brighton with last week is a better friend than that – having been out to straight places last week, this week we bar-hopped around Kemptown (Brighton's gay quarter), drank beers on the beach and sat around some big fire that someone had, wandered round the Laines before heading back to Kemptown and closing down a couple of places. A most excellent night's entertainment – we got squiffy and spoke to complete strangers, danced and fooled around in several places, and finally left town at about 5am. 

After a cup of tea at my friend's house I got the 6.19 train from Preston Park to Gatwick. I got to Gatwick at 7.00, and had a 47 minute wait for the Crawley train. I spent the time in Starbuck's drinking a White Mocha Coffee and eating cake. Gatwick was really crowded, and drifting round the airport slightly drunk and spacy from lack of sleep was pretty good fun. I finally got home at about 8.10. So I'm not totally disappointed with Brighton anymore – I just need to find good people to go with.

Dress code at the Fortuens of War.

I think I had about 2 hours sleep – I can't sleep when I've got things that I want to do. At 11 I headed into town to get things for breakfast, and then watched the Grand Prix De France on the telly. Boy Wonder Lewis Hamilton didn't do so well – 10 place penalty from the Canadian GP followed by a penalty in the early stages of the races saw him pretty much stuck at the back. I think that part of the problem is that he is is not getting the support that he needs from the McLaren team – Hamilton doesn't seem to have anyone talking him through the situations where he gets into trouble, and Ron Dennis doesn't seem to want to take responsibility either.

Never mind. I finished Sunday with a trip out to Tilgate Forest on the bike. I'm really starting to explore the forest now, and I even have a pretty good idea of where I am most of the time. I've found a couple cool trails – one of them is the trail I was on last week when my brakes went. It's less terrifying when you can slow down. I found another trail this week which is awesome. At a point in the trail the trees and bushes just part, and you have this fabulous view across the valley in the middle of the forest. I tried to take a picture of it:


View across the valley on the Valley View Trail

But I don't have the camera which can really get the image properly, and if I did, I certainly wouldn't take it mountain biking.