Wedding and White Rose

2 more days and August is over. That's what I'm telling myself. Then I can go back to normality: working, training and generally being a little more sensible. Not that I'm going wild over the next 2 days. Oh no. No chance of that. My head (and I suspect liver) is frazzled as I near the end of a 3 day hangover and it feels like I'm entering a period of deep sleep.

As Westlife said, "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun." Now I'm looking forward (strangely) to an Autumn of getting back into training for next year and finishing off (probably makes it sound nearer than it is) my PhD and making plans for what to do after that (exciting!).

So the "weekend":
Thursday
I rocked up in Sheffield having decided against doing the fell-race we agreed to. The plan was to have a curry with Oli and chums (just like the good old days) before heading to the pub. Oli called round with some Russian friends of his. These Russians, or more accurately, their bringing of vodka, would prove to be my nemesises for the next 2 nights...

Friday - the Wedding
And so it came to pass that Oli's big day started with me very hungover. But it was a gorgeous day and a merry band of us, including the man himself, headed out into the Peak District for a most enjoyable saunter. I ended up hammering it up Stanage Pole cos I thought it'd be rude not to. The ceremony and photos were all very nice and all that and all the brides and bridesmaids looked suitably attractive in their get up. Looking round it truly was a who's-who of British Orienteering - with a few Russians (tssk) and Swedes thrown in for good measure. Anyhoo, we then went off for the reception. My attempt, with Middleditch, to fix the length of the best man speech failed, but apart from that I had a brilliant time. On the way to the toilet once, I was collared by the evil Russians, who eventually let me go to the toilet, but not after having 5 (?) shots of vodka. I came out of the toilet and lo and behold Whigfield's finest, Saturday Night, is blaring out and, what's more, there are 20 girls (and no boys) on the dance floor dancing to it. It's not often a chance to make a hero out of yourself comes along and I most definitely pulled it off. At least it felt like I had at the time.

Saturday - White Rose
Here are the results from the White Rose. Now you may notice that I'm not on them. That's because I didn't run. There's no way that I could've. Middleditch and myself rocked up to the event campsite at around 6pm and promptly cracked open a beer. That was the first time I'd been outside on Saturday other than getting from the house to the car. From there the evening took off and I proceeded to make a repeat of the night before. I got so carried away that I even agreed to do the KIMM with Neil. Dammit.

Sunday - White Rose cont.
So I finally got out of the tent at 1pm when my sister arrived down from Newcastle. Now I haven't seen her all that much recently, and she'd just made a 2 hour drive to come and see me, but unfortunately it wasn't the exciting afternoon it should have been. I was unable to do much for obvious reasons. After much phaffing, we spent a lovely afternoon in Scarborough. Unsurprisingly, Neil got far too excited about his sprint map for next years British Champs, and I needed to have a kip in a coffee shop (upstairs, behind a sofa) but other than that we managed to have some fun. Sunday night wasn't fun: it rained, my head hurt and I didn't drink anything.

Monday - White Rose - Relay Gold!
I thought I'd better do some orienteering by this point. Actually, that's not true. Jenny Johnson put me in a relay team with Rob Baker and Nick Barrable and entered us. We were against Oli, Neil and Mat Dickinson. There was no backing out. But it wasn't going to be a normal relay. It was a Harris relay which is far too confusing to explain but basically involves the 3 of you doing a score event at the same time. You had 1 hour. Me, Neil and Mat had no watches. So Mat bought us some classy ones for £3 (total, not each!) in Scarborough. An accuracy of nearest minute was going to have to be enough. Apparently getting all of the controls would be "very unlikely". Anyway, 48 minutes later, my team had got them all and we'd won. At first I thought that I'd sort of enjoyed it, but wasn't sure, but I decided that I definitely did enjoy it when Oli's team finished and Oli was in a big boo. He had reasons to be upset though, and as his close friends, we did our best to remind him of them and rub them in. I won a mug.

What goes up must come down...

Urghhh. I've just had possibly the most fun 2 weeks of my life and have just got home and feel, well, tired I guess. And sad that the fun has ended. For now anyway...

Was it really only 2 weeks since the WOC banquet? My my how time has flown. I could write pages and pages about everything that's happened since then, but I won't. For my own benefit (i.e. so that I remember all the fun) I'll do some bullet points:
(NB, some stuff is omitted for various reasons eg. memory loss and tact)

WOC banquet
-Dressed as an Aussie
-Made some shapes
The day after
-"Completed" my breakfast challenge (+mushrooms-soya milk)
-Fell asleep in a team meeting
-Looooooong journey home
Dull mid-week at home
-Killed myself on a 2.5hr run
Oli's stag weekend preparations
-Took 24 cans of Carling, some golf clubs and a rope up onto Kinder Scout
-Pub quiz (lost)
Oli's stag weekend
-Cable skiiing (got round the 1st corner once) - arms sore
-Mountain boarding (fell off badly twice and gave myself whiplash) - head/neck sore
-Pub - head pain eases
-The Chin-Challenge
- complete legendary "3 minute crossing" in 2.56 including a can of Carling at the finish - ahead of Oli
- Big Bapz Mapz surveying team (Northrop and myself) produce a fine sprint race
- threw cheese off Mam Tor for everyone else to chase
- my team took victory in the strawpedo competition
- "the team" hit Castleton hard
- took a long time to get back to Edale
- beer, snus and 2 strawpedos knock me out
- try to walk back to Sheffield in my pants (fail)
World University Championships
-Loooooong journey out
-Awesome terrain
-Cocked up the long (dunno where I came - 30-something-th)
-9th in the Middle (best result for 10 months: good but not quite what I was after)
-Cocked up the relay
-Team did awesome
-Much much much banter
-The Banquet (victory for team GBR! - Village People and Spice Girls outfits go down a storm and we nail the dance routine)
-Looooong journey home

I do and I don't want to see photos from it! I'm sure stuff will filter through. Fortunately I don't have too long to wait before my next dose of fun - Oli's getting married on Friday then we're all heading up to the White Rose (3 day orienteering event in North Yorkshire) - I probably won't orienteer much.

Happy to be thirty-ninth - or sad not to be on the podium?

No prizes for guessing the answer to that. It all went horribly wrong for me today - I think I'm a bit ill in the stomach, my legs were heavy and I didn't cope well with being caught by Michael Mamleev early on. I was unable to fight for the 2nd half of the course and bumbled round the last few km into 39th place. I felt a long way off the best in the world today but more importantly, a long way off my own best.

But it was a WOC personal best result for me and it'll be piss easy for me to improve on it next time. And Jamie got Bronze!!! Sweet. I'm not gonna let myself be down for now cos Jamie got the Bronze!!! Sweet. And it's the relay tomorrow. Exciting. Then it's the banquet. Carnage. Then it's Oli's stag do. Punishment. Then it's the World Students. Confident. Then it's Oli and Jen's wedding. Romance. Then I can be in a boo about WOC and think about the future and all that.

Thanks to everyone who supported me during WOC - it means a lot.

Waiting nearly over...

It's been quite a long week for me since I qualified for tomorrows Middle final last Saturday. Fortunately the waiting's nearly over and I'm still excited and confident. The race will probably be the most technically interesting of the week and I expect a clean run will be heartily rewarded. My shape has been really good in my midweek training runs, although my stomach is a little dodgy - possibly as a result of my breakfast challenge and eating too much at eat all you can buffets every night.

The British Team has done really well so far - 7 top 2os including 2 top 10s. It kind of puts the pressure on a bit, but has shown me that great results are truly attainable and obviously the team spirit is high. In the words of Per Forsberg, "hmm we shall see, that's for sure", let's hope I'm not "too late now".

So my final preparations for today will be a little map geeking, a jog round the sprint course, a picnic with the GB specators and 2 Indiana Jones films. I've been able to do some decent training during the week - on Monday I ran Open2 in the WOC tour race. I ran pretty well, although I lost interest in the course a little. Results are here. Yesterday I raced round the Middle model pretty successfully. Besides training and spectating, I've kept myself quite busy this week: I haven't been very satisfied with my progress in Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (with GG), but my performances in Worms have improved markedly (against GG) and we won £1million on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire (with GG and Alison) last night. My Scrabble rating has dropped a little though. My breakfast challenge is nearly over and it's all going to schedule. I think I'll be left with a rather odd combination for Sunday which may not combine very well with a hangover.