Name

The Gruesome Twosome, Swallow, Lincolnshire, UK.

Category

Hilly (mostly) off road half marathon in teams of two.

Date

17th October 2015

Time

Mid morning, 11:00 start.

Weather Conditions

Dry with broken cloud and a nagging North Easterly wind.

Course/Road Conditions

The course was a mixture of wooded sections, open fields, small country roads and technical sections with logs to clear. The course profile provided very few flat sections; it was mostly either up a hill or down one! Conditions were largely dry; a choice of road shoes rather than trail shoes would not have significantly disadvantaged anyone.

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Name

The Great North Run, Tyneside, UK.

Category

All road half marathon. Probably one of the most famous half marathons in the world.

Date

13th September 2015

Time

Mid morning, 10:45 start.

Weather Conditions

Warming up as the morning went on, broken cloud.

Course/Road Conditions

Road was mostly dry; course profile was largely flat with gentle undulations where there were bridges, underpasses and so on. Only a couple of miles before the end presented any kind of real slope.

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Name

The Caythorpe Dash, Caythorpe, Lincolnshire, UK.

Category

Mostly off-road/trail/track half marathon. 4 person (2 man, 2 woman) teams with aggregated times or solo.

Date

1st February 2015

Time

Mid morning, 11:00 start.

Weather Conditions

Dry, cold air temperature (only just above freezing) with a fresh northerly breeze bringing in quite a wind chill. Broken cloud.

Course/Road Conditions

Road was mostly dry; trail and track were occasionally muddy with puddles. Course profile was largely flat for the first 16 km after an initial drop, followed by a hillier last 5 km or so.

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Since getting a Garmin Forerunner 610 I have been largely satisfied with the various aspects of getting the data from the said watch on to the Internet. It is a multi stage process, each with risks and issues very much dependent on non functional qualities, such as network and USB resilience, usability and so on. To give an example, I get the data from my watch using a USB ANT+ stick, Mac computer, Garmin's Express software, Garmin Connect online service and finally, Strava via Strava's linked account capability. That's a lot of steps, and a lot of potential failures lying in wait. I am not going to get into my rather low estimation of both Garmin's Connect service and Express software; needless to say, I think they are both rather substandard at the moment.

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