It was a Maprun to suit the season in Cheltenham this evening, starting at the heart of the Christmas lights.
An interesting course too: more densely packed than usual, so the faster runners could aim to collect them all. And six succeeded, but with a variety of routes of varying distances – it was tricky to pick the most efficient one! In particular, how to collect all the checkpoints in the centre of town and tie these in with the outskirts.
Seems there was no obvious ‘best’ approach, with efficient routes collecting all the inner checkpoints at once or dipping in and out of the centre. With the fast and furious pace it was easy to lose count of the checkpoints and miss one – especially 27 and 28 on the western edge, and 26 in the east. Runners were split on whether to do these as an out-and-back run, or to incorporate them in a wider loop.
Thanks to Ian Phillips for setting this evening’s event, assisted as ever by Pat Macleod (our Maprun guru – among many things!). Thanks to everyone who came… watch out for a special Maprun Challenge over Christmas.