7th February at Wimbledon Common (JOK) – The Varsity Match 2004.
After last year’s triumph with the Oxford team, and a half blue later, this year I was running for the
ex-Oxford club, JOK. Despite Wimbledon being down the road from where I live, I still managed to start late. The area is very nice, with some attractive, remote sections in the middle, though with a rather scrappy northern section. The courses made good use of all Wimbledon Common has to offer. No Wombles spotted, but the common was clean so they must be doing their work.
My result: Men’s A (11.4km): 100:15. 8.8 mins/km, not too shabby I thought on the back of no exercise, but a bottom 20% result due to all the l33t Oxford runners about, and the fact that the course got dark for my final three controls.
The map extract above shows one of the more interesting (if green) parts of the course. I overshot quite badly coming to Control 3 – due to the intricate brown detail mixed in amongst the green – and also at Control 4 – this was a case of just climbing too high up the rather subtle slopes. The yellow area shown is part of a golf course, which we weren’t allowed one, hence the rather interesting shape.
I missed the relays due to mis-timing the distance to Waterloo… So the GS-JOK team ended up with one member doing the first and last legs. Sorry Alan!