Chris Wright

I guess Christmas is all about traditions, and if they are good ones, you really look forward to them. Well Christmastime for me has become a series of races, events and activities which make this 3 week period one of the highlights of the year. It always starts with the Loftus Poultry Run, a 7 or 8 mile 'multi-terrain' race from the Loftus Leisure Centre - mainly road, but with two sections of farm track which can be quite muddy, and certainly not a flat course - the highest point is at the the Boulby mast on top of the hightest sea cliffs in England (some 600ft!). This year's race was last Sunday, 18 December - conditions not too bad for running, a little chilly perhaps, but not icy like some years and not very windy. I felt quite ropey for the first couple of miles, but managed to get going by the first field track, and had various rivals from North York Moors AC in my sights by the second. By the high point, I was with a pack of 4 from NYMAC plus Rob H from Loftus &

Last weekend I did two score orienteering events - a Bike-O Lanequest on Saturday and the NE Score Championships on Sunday. Now I really enjoy score events, and I do think it's a great pity that there aren't more held nowadays - a few years back EBOR used to run a regular series on a Saturday morning which I always tried to get to, and of course, NN run their annual Boxing Day Score event at Chopwell Woods, which I've been attending for donkeys years! I once took part in the Scottish Score Championships, and the Scots really treated it as a fairly important event - on a par with a Badge (sorry Regional) event. I subsequently tried to get the NE to hold a similar annual event, and it has limped along since, with the odd break. The main issue clubs have with running the NE Score Champs is that the attendances are usually well down on a colour coded (sorry District) event, and the event at Goathland last Sunday was no exception - only 60 in total, when we could have expected 1

Earlier this year, Rob P published some analysis of split times from the Gisborough Moors Race on Sunday 9 April 2006 on the NYMAC website. This is what he had to say: The "% time to Cooks" is the % of total race time it took competitors to reach Captain Cooks Monument. A higher % than the average of 43.9% implies that the runner took it relatively easy to Captain Cooks Monument (compared with the rest of the field), whilst on the other hand a lower than average % implies the runner slowed (suffered more?) in the latter stages of the race (relative to everyone else). Correct pace judgement in this race pays dividends and it can be quite satisfying passing fellow runners as they struggle on the long grind from Roseberry Topping to Highcliff Nab. The No.1 early cruiser (i.e. strong finisher) was Chris Wright who spent 46.5% of his time getting to Cooks Monument where he was 84th overall. He then proceeded to overtake 23 runners and finish 61st overall. Having been named as the