CJ - take it away and best of LUCK tomorrow on the final day of NIKE GIRD LOCK x
"I am an orienteer and being an orienteer is not so much about doing a sport as it is about a particular state of mind, and that state of mind involves a love of maps and a competitive streak. Orienteers can spend hours discussing maps, how they got from control 2 to control 3, whether the control placement was exactly right, whether the mapping was accurate etc. etc. So when after our monthly street-O event (one hour to get to as many controls as you can) a friend showed us a new map of London, featuring four ‘controls’ per postcode, we were of course fascinated. This map was for the NikeGrid event and it didn’t take much encouragement before a complete team of 15 members had signed up, in fact, we ended up with two teams made up of members of our orienteering club, called Team SLOW and More Team SLOW.
The rules of the game are simple:
1. The controls are phone boxes where you dial in to start and end your runs
2. You get 10 points for running from any phone box in a postcode to another, no points for running between postcodes.
3. At certain times of day 5-8am and 7-10pm you get 30 points per run, and certain ‘flywire’ boxes near bridges give you a bonus 50 points for a run from them.
4. Extra points are also available for doing a ‘dynamic’ i.e. all combinations of pairs of phone boxes in one postcode, for having the fastest run of the day in any given postcode or having the highest frequency of runs in a day in a given postcode.
5. NikeGrid also announces extra bonus points at random during the day so you can’t take your eye off the ball or stray too far from your running kit.
6. The game lasts for two weeks and the aim is to win the most points in a postcode to win the ‘individual crown’ or as a team to win the ‘team crown’.
So the first day came along and I though I’d go out and get my ‘dynamic’ badge by doing all six pairs of phone boxes in a postcode. I live in SW1 but the phone boxes quite far apart there so I thought I’d go for SW3 instead where the total distance to complete a ‘dynamic’ was 7km, a rather pleasant jog around Chelsea, which it was. I then checked my scores on the website and discovered that only one other person had done much in SW3 that day, running back and forth between a ‘flywire’ box and the nearest one, so I thought I could just do a few of those shuttles… 2 hours and 12km later I finished the day holding the individual and the team crowns.
Over the next few days we got an idea of the competition and it looked like Team SLOW and More Team SLOW were up near the top of the leaderboard, our main competition was Just Run It – a team made up of people who’d won individual crowns in a pilot version of NikeGrid run earlier in the year and Team Audiofuel – put together by a guy who writes running music.
What we hadn't anticipated was the number of hours some of these guys would put into protecting their ‘crowns’ and coming to steal yours. Never before have I done so many 2-3h sessions and it’s effectively interval training every day, which can’t be good for you! When someone jokingly suggested an ice bath half way into the first week I decided anything was worth a try and I have to say I think it works, it certainly lessens the general ache the next day so you think you can get out there again.
The whole event has been really fun and the final 24 hours (it finishes at 6pm on Saturday) are bound to be crazy as everyone makes a final push to grab one more postcode and protect their existing ones. It is astonishing how addictive it is once you hold a postcode you can’t just sit by and let it get taken, you just get back out there and carry on. The team spirit has been wonderfully motivating too, we have a facebook group where people are constantly discussing tactics and congratulating each other on particular achievements.
The only downside is that the easiest way to get points is to shuttle between the two closest boxes in a postcode which gets a bit boring after a while. It would have been great the set up meant you got most points for running in the most postcodes, or at least for repeatedly doing the ‘dynamic’ in your one postcode. A few members of our teams have decided to go and run in all 48 postcodes, Ed Catmur completed this feat first of all the people competing and Verity Vale is soon to be the first lady to complete all 48.
In terms of personal achievements I just added up the GPs logs in my training diary and so far I have completed 130km in two weeks! I’ve also lost 3lb of honeymoon weight despite re-fuelling with chocolate milk fairly regularly and I have realized that 2-3 hours of running is not beyond me, as I thought it was. I intend to have a good rest on Sunday and Monday but then I plan to capitalize on the amazing exercise base that this has given me by doing lots more training for which I definitely need an aim. Since I’m missing the SUPERchick 10km FUN run tomorrow, I think first up will be a 10km race to see if all that running has made me any faster!"
130km!!!!!!!! Icebaths!!!!!! INSANE!!!!! I though I was doing well running 21km total in a week!! The SUPERchick ORIENTEERING SUPERstar crown MUST go to CJ - I doubt anyone can steal this from you ;-))
p.s. YOU are so hosting a "Lost and Found" SUPERchick Orienteering special - once I convince the boss! xx
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