With warnings of severe weather all day, sleet and snow expected, not many people made it to Romsey. Myself have been driving back from work in London and this was almost on the route, so I have planned my commute to attend. After really difficult driving conditions on the M3 with heavy snow actually falling, I was pleasantly surprised that there was no precipitation once I got to Romsey. Whilst the rain and snow has held off, the cold air did arrive during my run and for the last 15 minutes, I could really feel the cold bite.

This Wessex Night League event in Romsey, more a Street-O type event which I occasionally attend in the London area, except that there were proper controls out (thank you) as opposed to the SLOW Street-O events where you have to write down clues at every “control”. Touch-free punching also meant better flow in/out of the controls (usually – I had to double back for a few that didn’t register first).

Well planned by Rob Finch, you really had to think and there were quite a few options, not only for the generic strategy but specifically in between quite a few pairs of controls the route to choose. This is in my mind an indication of good planning as it reduces dead running – even though some of that is inevitable in a street event and there was some here too. A really nice intricate area in the NE corner of the map, had to take it carefully and almost felt like a Sprint event in that area with lots of rapid decisions and the opportunity to practice route simplification a bit.

In the end got 2nd place, exactly like I expected when I went through in my head driving there trying to guess the likely contenders. Dave Currie (SOC) won, and whilst in hindsight I don’t think my strategy was the best, he seems to have followed most of the same strategy, so this was purely about him being faster than I am. Not really a surprise there, but a confirmation of an aim for myself to work towards 🙂
Made a few errors amounting to about 2 min altogether (this includes changing my mind and doubling back a few times), and from a running perspective felt quite tired in the middle section. Not really a surprise after 2 relatively hard running sessions over the last 2 days. Once I conquered the uphill it became easier and somehow I also felt fresher from that point as well, so tried to push from that point on.