Our Legend of the Week this week is Frank! He has put a lot of work into organising our FWTN series this year which has been a massive success. Frank also cooked us some delicious bolognese while we did this interview!!
Name: Frank Townley
Course: 4th year Maths
Where are you from: Woking
When/how did you start orienteering: I started because my dad did it, who started because of his dad! I’ve been orienteering since I was younger than I can remember
Pre race hype song: I haven’t done many races recently but my ‘last rep of the session’ song would be Femininomenon – Chappell Roan (excellent choice)
Go to uni meal: I have a tupperware of porridge on the bus to uni every morning with chia seeds, flax seeds, frozen/mixed fruit and golden syrup
Most memorable race: WOC Knock Out day – didn’t run it but the two days before were super stressful, I did an all nighter the day leading up to it planning the ridiculous logistics – 13 mins to move barriers and controls around between races but all the prep paid off and it went really well!
Best orienteering achievement: winning JK m14 overall (2017), I had never won anything before and I was really keen to do well because I wasn’t cool enough at the time, but it worked! I got ‘in with the cool kids’ because of the result (and now lives with said ‘cool kids’)
Dream sponsor: Waitrose, the upperclass Aldi. Food is so good, I’m not particularly materialistic, just hungry
Coolest place you’ve run: the Life on Mars trail in Croatia on EUOC Hol, or on Harris with Wozzle and Joe we walked/ran up nearly all the peaks over 500m
Aims for the year: get onto my master’s course, as well as to train consistently – ‘get into the mindset of the process not the goal’
Fave thing about EUOC: the weekends away, a great chance to get to know EUOCers better and more opportunity to chat for longer than pasta nights – ‘you get the chance to get into the nitty gritty’. Nice to spend time with EUOC and get to go to nice places, it’s good to get outside of Edinburgh
thumb/baseplate compass: thumb
Fave EUOC social: board game night, you don’t have to think about any chat just good vibes
Sprint or forest: I can’t get in the forest much at the moment, because of my ankle 
Sprint is not proper orienteering – it just annoys members of the public and causes too much disruption. Forest feels like ‘what humans are meant to do’. I prefer racing at sprint though, forest is stressful and difficult while racing.
Go to karaoke song: Love Story – Taylor Swift (another excellent choice), but I got a bit sick of it so I think now it would be Shine – Take That
Biggest Rival: my ankles… and maybe Adam Conway a while ago
Idol: Olli Hoare, he’s very open about mental health and struggles he’s had – very inspirational and also very speedy, a Commonwealth Games 1500m champion!
Most embarrassing moment on an orienteering course: JIRCs 2015 – I thought I was on the same course as Dave Bunn so followed him for ages but he was on a completely different course to me. I have also mispunched 6 weekends in a row once…