November Classic Weekend - Dan Weaver, Matt Pickering
The meeting location for the weekend was clearly familiar to us all thanks to the GeoGuessr social, however we still all arrived late. 10 minutes after the stated time we set off. Matt had pumped up his tyres for the increased safety of his passengers. Due to the early start we all fell asleep while it was raining, until the rugby came on. Matt got very annoyed at the loss, and turned the radio off in the final minutes. We eventually arrived in Chichester (and it was still raining). Some of us decided to tape our nipples for extra protection; Dan did not to his detriment. We then braved the elements for our 6.4km and 4.4km courses. We all got very wet and went down MANY dead ends, some of us even went through some out of bounds areas. The Men's open course ended up being 12km, Matt came 5th in 53:09, Dan came 7th in 53:55, Peter came 15th in 59:35, Rob came 20th in 64:48 and Nuhaadh came 67th in 66:02 on course 4.
We then made our way to Tesco, spotting a crash (not Matt for once), and played the splits game. We then went shopping for tea and by the time we had finished the Lougers(LUOC) had already arrived at the scout hut. On the way back we realised we had no custard so sent Peter into a a small shop on the way, he returned with one can for 12 people. We immediatly sent him back in for more.
We eventually arrived at the hut and cooked a veggie chilli and lots of Rob's traditional family apple crumble, this passed without incident and went down very well.
Later on some youths parked outside playing loud music and scaring us, some even came in to use the toilet and left without saying anything. We then played Encrypto, Dan and Rob correctly guessed Peter and Adam's (LUOC) code twice in a row, a 1/576 chance. We then went to bed.
The Lougers woke early and successfully cooked us tonnes of porridge without burning it. Which they left for us to clear up. Rob then made LOTS of sandwiches before we left. Dan worked his charm once again on the "key lady" and we headed to the New Forest. After a wrong turn and dodging many cross country runners we just about squeezed into the car park. The race was very wet due to the recent heavy rain, this involved there being shin high marshes that weren't mapped. Dan had lots of small mistakes, and Matt had one very big one. Peter and Lawrence (ex club captain) formed the UBOC train for the majority of the course. Rob missed out 4 controls and Nuhaadh found only 1 control while managing to run 10km. Matt got absolutely smoked by Dan, coming 16th in 94:26, 8 seconds behind the 15th place from Dan in 94:18, with the entirety
of the lead coming from the run in. Lawrence came 26th in 112:53, and Peter ended in 31st in 121:26 all on the Black. As Rob and Nuhaadh mispunched they were disqualified. Ex UBOC memeber Sophie Gordon came 80th on the Short brown in a time of 133:03. Other notable mentions are Matt Pembery (Bath) coming second on the very short green while
only walking round.
We then made our way home feeling ready for the next one.