Route optimisation (... or Do I Have Too Much Time)

Just like Clive Woodward at the last World Cup, I have been using some of the world's most sophisticated computer software (that's Paint Shop Pro) to analyse my tactical sporting performance. This is the surest and quickest route to success, and makes a pleasant change from just training really hard.

Last weekend, Lenka and I took part in another adventure race in the Lake District - we have to visit as many checkpoints as possible in 5 hours on foot and by mountain bike, in any order. The team that scores the post points wins, and different checekpoints are worth different numbers of points (denoted by my handwritten markings on the maps, below). We kept a fairly good pace, didn't suffer any mechanical failures or anything, but still only ranked 11th out of 26 teams.

This map shows our MTB route (in orange) and what must be roughly the route taken by the winners (in purple). So we both covered similar distances.

But this is a comparison of the running route - looks like the winners covered a fair bit more ground here!

However, the winners spent about 1hr 45 mins running, whereas we spent just over an hour. So we took longer than them to cover our MTB route, and made more few questionable route choices. We did the running first, but I'm thinking that it would have been better to get all the strenous mountain biking out the way. Hmmm, so many possibilities - still I think that we are close to getting the right formula for Ultimate Success. We've already stormed up the series table by a mathematical quirk.

Oh, and I was 50% wrong in my Apprentice predictions. Ansell was by far the best candidate, but Sir Allen has obviously fallen for Michelle's rags to riches story, which therefore makes her the odds-on favourite for the final next week. You know that a TV series has touched the national consciousness when there are rambling opinion pieces in the newspaper explaining what it says about the state of the nation (not that I agree, which is unusual for the Guardian)

So frustrating

It is a beautiful hot, sunny day and I'm at a loose end. And yet I'm down in the dumps... the TV, newspapers and radio all tell me that there are Important Local Elections taking place up and down the country but in Lancaster there are none to be found.

To an election addict like me it feels like Christmas has been cancelled - but only in the local area. Only on my travels elsewhere I have been able to observe exciting election posters and read all of the interesting leaflets that have been pushed through the doors of people lucky enough to live in more democratic places such as London and Weymouth... after all half the fun of elections is in the build up and I would have enjoyed volunteering to be a canvasser for a party... any party (well maybe not the BNP) and being able to knock on people's doors wearing a smart rosette and surprise them by already knowing their name from a print-out of the electoral roll.

I do have previous experience campaigning for the Tories (mock school election in 1997 - I thought pushing the Nasty Party in their darkest hour would be a challenge but we scored about 65% of the vote, which probably says more about the school than anything else) and the Lib Dems (Oxford local elections 2002, Carfax Ward - we won by forcing people out of the colleges just before the polls closed!). Because of this I would probably have offered my services to the Green Party this time, since Lancaster is one of their little enclaves. But it is not to be.

I was considering travelling all the way to Manchester to cast a vote, if only to demonstrate how easy it is to commit electoral fraud. I know my brother's birthday and his home address, see, and I am also certain that he will not be voting himself. As it is, however, I will have to console myself with the late night electoral coverage on the BBC as the only 'fix' that I will be getting for a while.