Sunday was another glorious day. This time we were out in the New Forest for the SOC November Classic. Cruelly, not only were we helping early, but I was shouting out names at the start line. This wasn’t good for either my alcohol induced headache or sore throat! When the time came to run I was dehydrated, my legs were tired (mainly from the OMM last weekend) and my left ankle was sore from slipping off a kerbstone in the previous day’s city race.
The map (Wood Crates) proved to be one of the best New Forest areas I’ve been to in a long while. It has a good mix of the usual vague woodland and small patches of open heathland, a scattering of contours to add interest and, although largely runnable, the dead bracken was still high enough to mean that you had to be precise with your navigation. That said, I think the planning could have made more of the area. The controls themselves always seemed to be backed by some large catching feature. Consequently, I didn’t make many mistakes although wasted almost five minutes on a couple of short legs at the end. (My excuse was that I was thrown by giving directions to a group of walkers!) My biggest problem was just lack of speed and the results have me over fifteen minutes down on Ian Nixon who had a storming run (obviously saving himself the day before).
Steve Pullen has a selection of photos on the SOC website showing what a beautiful day it was.