I made one silly mistake on the way to 7 – assuming, based on size, that I was on the large north-south track whereas in fact I was on the small path that headed off west. On 10 I failed miserably on the “sticking to dry land where possible” part, getting literally bogged down. This did give Richard Robinson the chance to catch me and we spent most of the rest of the course in sight of one another. I got ahead on the way to 16 and managed to stay ahead until the finish.
If I hadn’t been dawdling quite so much in the first half I might not have lost the five minutes on Richard. The 12 minutes that Kristian Jones (fresh from his European Youth Orienteering Champs victory) finished ahead in the results was unobtainable though.
Dave,
still you did better than me. I started slow, got bogged down lots (since running round the marsh on tracks seemed too boring) and finished slow. I seem to either go round quite slowly and never get very lost or run too fast and get very lost. The latter is generally more fun since when I get it right I get it spot on but it doesn’t happen too often.
cheers,
Neil
Many would say that is the essence of orienteering – running as fast, but not faster, than you can navigate. Anyone with a grasp of the basics should be able to walk round a course without making any errors. Given that in your case running fast is not a problem, what this implies is that you need to work on the speed at which you can navigate…