Alicia Sykes's Blog

The Chilton 100 was a 122km /177km sportive in the Chilton Hills
http://humanrace.co.uk/events/cycling/chiltern-100-sportive

A fast and flat half marathon through Hackney (East London), with 13,000 runners and a route including the Olympic park, Hackeny Empire and some of the green spaces of Hackeny marshes and Victoria park.

The Oxford half marathon is a 13.1 mile flat run though Oxford city, including Iffley Road, Cowely, the Mini Plant, the River Thames + Canal Path and this year the Iffley running track and a "Banister Mile" which was separately timed.

the start

A not so great photo of me coming into the finish

Map of the route, tracked using Runtastic

I tracked my run (as always) with Runtastic, by far my favourite sports tracking app. Below is a link the the session, also the map below is from the same session.
https://www.runtastic.com/en/users/Alicia-Sykes/sport-sessions/331596587

View from the starting line

Palace to Palace was a charity cycle ride in aid of the Princes Trust and sponsored by Saudi Arabia, it's an annual event which took place on the 5th of October 2014 this year. The standard ride was a scenic 45 mile (72km) route from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle, including Westminster, Richmond, alot of countryside and small villages and finishing at Windsor.There was also an Ultra ride, which was 90 miles and had he same starting and finishing points.

The event was very well organised, with the whole route fully marshalled, optional chip timing, and a free lunch and goodie bag at the end :) We were very lucky with the weather, apart from a cold start, the rest of the day was cool, sunny and clear with dry roads, near perfect cycling conditions.

The Accenture Classic Team

Me and a friend from work road cycled as part of team Accenture, along with 200+ other Accenture employees, who together raised over £42,000 or the Princes Trust.


All in all a very fun Sunday raising money for a good cause :)

On the 13th of July 2014 nearly 25,000 runners descended onto Piccadilly for the Vitality British 10k charity run, with 10% of the runners running for Help for Heroes. The route went past many iconic sights of London, including Buckingham Palace, St James Palace, Westminster Abbey and many more.

The view from the (very very windy) top

This weekend a group of us went up to North Wales on Friday evening to go climbing and trekking. We split into two groups so that one group would climb on the first day and walk on the second and visa versa for the second group. Unfortunately for our group the weather was too bad for us to climb outside on Saturday, so we went to the Indy climbing wall in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (full place name is: llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch - that's crazily long! )

Our Route

Longest place name in Europe

By the lake at the Devils Kitchen

On the second day, Sunday we went walking and climbed Tryfan, we only had half a day to do this, and we covered some serious contours, and a 700m climb.

This was also the first adventurous training trip that I had organised, I was so worried that something would go wrong, but other than a few people dropping out last minute (probably after they'd seen the forecast), everything went very smoothly.

Top of the Col'de Izard

Exercise Spartan Hike is the British Army regional nordic skiing championships held in French Alps.

Our training consisted of 2 and a half weeks on Ex. Blue Nordic Steel before Christmas followed by a further week after Christmas before the competitions started. The competitions consisted of an individual classic, relay classic, individual biathalon, relay biathalon and a military patrol race.

The whole thing was an amazing experience, we all learnt to nordic ski - both classic and skate, learnt how to maintain our skis, including waxing them everyday, we all became really good friends, and not to mention super fit!!

Marathon De Bessans

While we were out there me and 2 others also competed in the Bessans International Marathon, which was good fun too, that devil is their mascot, at the end of the race there was mild whine, or van chou - always good ;)

Girls Team

Me on the biathalon race

Read more on the AWSA website: http://www.awsa.org.uk/ex-spartan-hike/

Me coming into the finish line

 The Oxford half marathon was held on the 13th of October, it was a good course, starting at the mini plant in Cowley, and going all around Oxford including along the river, through the city centre, through Iffley and seeing all the sites of Oxford. The route was almost completely flat, with no noticeable hills at all.

Although 22km isn't a particularly far distance to run, I reckon it's the furthest I've gone without walking, and I really enjoyed it!! There was a great atmosphere around, everyone was cheering on everyone, and a real sense of accomplishment at the end. It was a shame about the weather (torrential freezing rain all day) - but at least we didn't get too hot while running :)

One slight mistake I did make though was not warming up, cooling down or stretching. I really felt that when I was running for the bus the next morning, was so stiff!

I completed is in 2hrs 10 minits - so lots of room for improvement for next time :)

Today I did my first triathlon :) I did it with 4 friends, and it was a good day out. Got to say I genuinely enjoyed pretty much every moment of it, (despite being near the back most the way round!).

That's me on the far left, with the rest of the team