At the weekend, we went to our first orienteering event of the year (and Christine’s first as a W35!). I went round the 2.9km yellow course with the children which, when combined with the 800m to/from the start/finish and the hills proved a bit of an epic and we ended up in our usual position in the results. Other than a little pre mid-course snack whining from Emma, both children seemed to enjoy themselves although Duncan only climbed out of the buggy to punch at each control. I went for a run afterwards, sticking to the paths as my ankle still hasn’t fully recovered nearly three months on. I’m now on anti-inflammatories to try and remove the last of the swelling from the joint and hopefully allow the physio and exercises to do their work properly.

I was pleased to find that my ankle, although still slightly swollen from the CompassSport Cup final, didn’t seem to be causing me any trouble and, not having done a huge amount of running, my legs actually felt reasonably fresh. My navigation wasn’t particularly clean though and I seemed to spend rather a lot of time about 50 metres adrift from the control site. It wasn’t a bad run though and would have put me in fourth place had it not been for the small fact that, on downloading, I appeared to be missing control number 4…

I try to use a backup card at larger events using Emit but there was apparently no mark in the appropriate place. Unfortunately, the use of a backup card was probably my downfall. Without one, I’m pretty good at checking the display on my card to ensure I have punched but I tend not to when I do have a backup card. As is often the case with Emit though, on this occasion there were several controls where I found it impossible to get my wrist oriented to get the card down flat. It would seem that control 4 was one of these and, although my GPS shows that I did at least visit the control (I found I couldn’t actually remember!), I stand disqualified.

20111106 Busketts Lawn

It being half-term, we decided to head along to the Wednesday orienteering taking place at nearby Micheldever Forest. My ankle still hasn’t recovered from the trip up to the Peak District so I went round the shortest course (the 3k Yellow) with Emma and Duncan whilst Christine ran the Blue. Duncan was already asleep by the time we had completed the 1k route march to the start which was a bit of a shame as it wasn’t the smoothest of courses. In the background of this photo you can see the ‘ride’ that we had just come along – a mixture of foot high grass/brambles, foot deep water-filled trenches, and branches! I certainly got a good upper body workout hefting Duncan over all of that and needless to say Duncan was awake when we finally arrived at this control. We didn’t complete the course but did have fun and also enjoyed the Junior Squad cakes that were on sale!

It was the CompassSport Cup Final last Sunday and, SOC having qualified, we felt obliged that at least one of us should attend (having concluded that Sheffield was too far to take the children when they probably wouldn’t get much of a run about). I shared a lift with a couple of other club members and we stayed at Edale YH the night before. The day itself started with cloud on the hill tops but by the time I started around mid-day there were glorious blue skies. Unfortunately, at control 6 out of 28 I landed badly from a 2ft drop off a rock and twisted my ankle. After half a minute sat on the afore-mentioned rock I hobbled off in the direction of the next control (also the direction of the finish). I found I was still able to run and completed the course.

I didn’t have a bad run after that with just a couple of minor wobbles on 11 and 22. I was, however, simply just too slow ending up down in 47th place albeit out of a large field of 129. I’d like to think that maybe without the ankle injury I could have completed the course 3 or 4 minutes faster and may have just scraped in to the top 30. It was a tough field though. I was just glad not to be the one doing the driving as, once the adrenalin left my system, the ankle was pretty sore. Today, the swelling has started to subside and the ankle seems to be pretty flexible so I’m hoping for a quick recovery.

At the end of the Bank Holiday week we were due to run in the SOC team for the Dorset Coast Path Relay. As the weather forecast looked set to stay dry we decide to camp the preceding two night’s on a (randomly selected) campsite on the outskirts of Charmouth. Whilst well placed for the start of the relay, it was rather too close to the A35 and we had to drive to the beach. Rather more annoying was that, despite being quite expensive (£27 per night), you were expected to also fork out for a session at the indoor pool. To be fair though, the money seemed to be well spent and there was a life-guard at the pool and the site generally appeared to be very well kept.

We had a great day at the beach in Charmouth on the Friday and met up with Christine’s brother and family that evening for dinner. (It was our anniversary and, after 11 years, I couldn’t wear my wedding ring as it has developed a split!)

In keeping with the tent’s previous outings this year – it was wet on the morning of our last night. However, by the time I’d been to Lyme Regis to do my short leg at the start of the relay and returned, the wind had done a reasonably job of drying it out. Having got everything back in the car we headed over to Abbotsbury where we were running the legs either side of the hill fort. We then weren’t on again until after Lulworth but sadly spent most of that time in traffic around Dorchester for the Dorset County Show. We had lunch on a windswept Povington Hill, watching the dark clouds form over the hills adjacent to the sea.

Christine ran the section from Flower’s Barrow to Kimmeridge. A hill team then brought the baton up to meet at Clavell Tower and I set off for Chapman’s Pool. With the restart at Lulworth there was, for a change, other runners around. I was fairly confident that I should be able to stay ahead of Jack Benham but as we approached Chapman’s Pool and I passed the fourth changeover for the Junior Squad team, I wasn’t sure I’d manage to hold them at bay for much longer. Thankfully the hill team weren’t quite as late as arriving as they had apparently been at some earlier handovers and I wasn’t forced to climb all the way back out of Chapman’s Pool.

We then set of for Studland where the children had a chance to play on the beach. The other members of the SOC team slowly assembled (three are required to run the beach leg to Sandbanks together) and we were greeted to the sight of Paul Whipple splashing through the water round the headland just as the Kerno team came down the hill. The blue and yellow tops therefore inter-mingled as we set off along the shoreline (where thankfully the sea was leaving some relatively firm wet sand) in the race to be third team across the line. I reached the ferry terminus ahead of the first Kerno runner but who were those next two runners? It turned out that Iain McNally (who hadn’t been there when I started) had arrived late but had caught us up which thankfully meant we had three runners home before the next Kerno runner appeared.

In the final reckoning we were fourth over the complete course and second in the handicap with a new fastest time for SOC of 8 hours 34 minutes. In addition Iain was crowned King of the Coast. And most importantly (given that I had told Christine to leave the waterproofs at home) the forecast rain didn’t return until the evening.

The others had done a yellow course whilst I was out. Unfortunately it started to tip it down shortly after Christine set off. We repaired to the car where Duncan proceeded to insert coins in to the CD player (anyone have a set of removal keys so I can turn it upside-down and shake them out?!). By Christine’s return there was blue sky everywhere – just a shame that more people hadn’t hung on a bit for the Summer Series prize giving and club BBQ.

20110820 Brockenhurst Urban Score GPX

Friday night was the orienteering club AGM at Fleming Park leisure centre. I picked up trophies for Christine and myself and Philip Cooper gave an entertaining presentation on his orienteering travels (or, to be more accurate, his actuarial travels with lots of orienteering tacked on) followed by a quiz which netted me a bar of chocolate. The flat roof of the building meant that Philip was nearly drowned out by the sound of the long overdue rain hammering down. When the meeting ended I made a dash for the car and it was only as I drove away that I heard the tinkling of glass from the rear windscreen…

A note on the front windscreen explained everything: “I am so sorry, my little son broke your windscreen by a stone.” This was, however, a very honest chap as it also gave his name and phone number. The following day we therefore had the windscreen replaced under the car insurance and the errant boy’s father has promised to transfer the excess to our bank account. I didn’t offer to return to him the stone that was still resting on our parcel shelf! Other than the sound of glass tipping back and forth when the boot is opened (it will eventually grind itself small enough to come out the drainage holes we were told), everything is now back as it should be.

On Saturday we were back to Fleming Park for more orienteering – this time one of SOC’s Summer Series events. I took Emma and Duncan round the yellow where the major challenge was navigating past the playground and sandpit without coming to a complete halt! It’s also only just occurred to me that Emma walked round – in last year’s series we never made it all the way without the aid of a pushchair. With the inclusion of the old municipal golf course it is an interesting enough area but not particularly big. My 4.1km light green course criss-crossed the map several times and it still only took me just over 18 minutes to get round. Sadly we left the event amidst much crying as there wasn’t time to revisit the playground as Emma was due at a party in the afternoon.

Thursday night is usually Christine’s running night but this week we though tag along – partly so that Emma could see them doing their silly walks for the warm up, but mainly so that the rest of us could go to the orienteering club’s Maze-O event, also at Fleming Park. Quite what the general public made of the 15 or so people dashing about in a 5 metre square sea of red and white tape I do not know. It worked quite well for us though. Duncan got to hold the Emit brick. Emma and I then navigated around the maze shouting to Duncan when we reached a control. He would then just plough straight under all the tapes, punch the control and wander off again!

We arrived at Saturday’s orienteering a little later than planned. Emma had been up for hours in the night for no particular reason but compensated by getting up late in the morning. Having arrived shortly after 11 at Island Thorns (via Fritham) there was still just about time for both of us to get a run. Christine went out on the green whilst I started off with Emma and Duncan on the yellow. The planner warned me that the rides weren’t particularly buggy friendly and, given that Emma needed to try and climb every tree we passed on the 500m walk to the start, it wasn’t a difficult decision not to do the whole course. In fact, we’d only done two controls by the time Chritine came to relieve me and they then spent most of the time I was out playing in the stream on the way to the next control.

I ran the blue (the longest course on offer) taking just under 45 minutes for 7 km. It’s a lovely bit of forest to run in with nothing but beech leaves on much of the forest floor (although they did rather too good a job of hiding the marshes in places). I can’t claim a clean run with a bit of hunting for controls sunk in pits but it was enough to see off the competition. Most importantly though, it was a lovely day with blue skies and warm sunshine and everyone enjoyed their day out.

I had a weekend full of orienteering. On Saturday we went to help at the JOK Chasing Sprint at Shotover near Oxford. I had first shift, helping on the prologue start and then collecting a few controls (only one before a competitor came chasing after me to punch it but then he had started 20 minutes after the last start time). I then took the kids to play in a sandy/muddy stream whilst Christine helped with the chase start which they loved. In fact, they were having so much fun that they seemed oblivious to the race unfolding around them although it did give me a chance to take a few photos.

On Sunday, I left the rest of the family to go to Manor Farm Country Park whilst I got a lift to the Southern Champs, taking place on the Hambleden Estate near Henley-on-Thames. It made a pleasant change having time to prepare before the start of the race although I still had to go back for the Emit brick I left behind. I enjoyed my run as Hambleden is a delightfully runnable area (if you discount the hills) and I had no pain from my dodgy knee. I only messed up two controls: two minutes at number 10 (see RouteGadget for the near miss) and half a minute at the penultimate control. On the long (~3km) leg, after taking time to examine the map on the previous leg, I ended up going pretty straight. It will be interesting to see whether anyone ran faster taking the long flatt(er) route going south and then coming in from the east.

I was 1st out of 5 when I finished but results were delayed and we headed off before the prize giving. Still no results when I went to bed so it was a pleasant surprise to have an email in the morning from a club-mate indicating that they had picked up my M35L trophy. So, growing older has its benefits. The only fly in the ointment? Richard Barrett took nearly 5 minutes less on the same course as an M40. Looks like I still have some work to do over the next 5 years!

So, back to the disaster… on download I discovered that I had missed number 10. Looking at the GPS track I must have run straight past it but I don’t remember the control at all so I’m prepared to accept that the disqualification is valid. I suspect I was distracted by Matt Crane coming past at the previous control and it was probably around this point that he disappeared from sight. The fight through the undergrowth then meant that I failed to look at my map again until I was out on the road. Also, given it was an inter-club competition, I was making a point of using the backup card. As a consequence I wasn’t checking the display which might have alerted me to the mismatch in control numbers. Shame really as I would have come 5th. Fortunately the club still qualified for the final (BOK having been in the top three last year).

20110116 Longleat Compass Sport Cup GPX

On Sunday we went to our first orienteering event of 2011 – an SOC local event at Lucas Castle and Highland Water (starting near Bolderwood). It was a frosty start but blue skies meant it turned in to a lovely day. I took Emma and Duncan around the white course. Duncan was asleep before we left the car so was pretty quiet until near the end where he started to object to being in the buggy. Emma enjoyed herself but, as always, needed some edible bribes to keep her going to the end of the course! We arrived back just before Christine so she could take over the reins whilst I went out on the brown course.

It’s not the most exciting of areas but the running is pleasant enough where the heather isn’t too deep. I made only one real blunder, wasting around a minute and a half on control 9 where I headed too far north as I came off the top of the hill. My legs felt tired as, indeed, did I more generally, and I didn’t feel able to run hard on the numerous long legs. An after-effect of giving blood on Wednesday perhaps? Still, I was second in the results and first M35 (yes, I am now officially over the hill in orienteering terms) which is a nice start to the year.

20110109 Lucas Castle and Highland Water GPX

20101205 Fritham GPX

The course length for the first day was a massive 46km but looking ahead on the map as we set out along the road towards the first control, it was obvious that this wasn’t the first bit of tarmac we would see. In fact, almost 10k of the course would be along roads. I did, however, also discover that Roderick intended to set a steady pace for the day and that meant we weren’t going to be running the uphills, even if they were on the road! The navigation was also pretty simple (you can see our route on RouteGadget) with only one leg (6-7) not having significant linear handrails. We made one minor blunder on the way from 3-4, missing the bottom end of the wall (it may even have been a fence there) and finding another unmapped one a little further on. We finished in just under eight hours and well before sunset (our major concern before starting).

The rain and wind arrived soon after we’d pitched our tent and I certainly got little sleep during the night. There was a brief respite whilst we packed up our tent in the morning but I started in my full waterproofs and kept them on for the whole day. The course was certainly more interesting both from the point of view of the terrain and navigation. We lost significant time on the way to 4 as we back-tracked up the river to find somewhere to cross only to see people crossing at the point where we’d originally hit the river. It was up to our knees on that crossing and the second river on that leg was up to our thighs. On the leg from 5-6 we braved the raging torrent and survived the waist deep crossing clinging to another pair.

We finished the second day in just under 6.5 hours putting is in 32nd place over the two days. That was in the top half which I consider to be a respectable position. Thanks Roderick for standing in at short notice and persuading me to give the A a go. Would I run the A again? Maybe, but I think I’d prefer to try the Long Score. It may be academic though – with next year’s OMM likely to be somewhere in the far North I’m not sure whether I’ll be going.

I had a rolling start having had to sprint there. If I hadn’t stopped to pick up control descriptions I would have probably been on time rather than being a couple of seconds late. I was pretty slow on the way round the course but at least the navigation was going okay, at least until I hit number 12, or rather didn’t hit it and wandered aimlessly around the hillside until I retraced the path of a pack of runners on my course. You can see the gory details on RouteGadget. That lost me at least five minutes and without which my time might have looked a little bit more respectable. As it was, we had both done our bit to make sure that SOC ended up second to last (read that how you will). At least it was some good practice in the heather for next weekend!

The leg 7 to 8 illustrates one of the major problems at the event: bracken. You’d set off along the leg through some beautiful runnable woodland and then hit a block of head high bracken that wasn’t shown on the map at which point you diverted to the nearest path and then generally didn’t leave it until you needed to. Eight was also where the frustration really started to set in. According to the GPS track, I was within 20 metres of the control when I first went past what should have been an obvious feature. The control, however, would appear to have been on the other side of the circle. Much time wasting then ensued. In contrast, control 9 is obviously in the right place but there is nothing to see on the ground. The clearing 150 metres up the hill was much more obvious than the one I was apparently heading straight towards and got to within 25 metres of.

The wiggle on the way to 10 was my fault as was being too far north at 12 (although wading through chest high bracken didn’t help me rectify my mistake). Thirteen, however, is just in the wrong place on the map and there was more bracken to obscure the fact. Fourteen was another feature that didn’t really exist on the ground and the GPS track suggests that it was the edge of the dark green to the west that was badly mapped as the straight line certainly didn’t lead me in to the control.

Even when back out in the open, things didn’t improve. The scattered trees en-route to 16 were hard to discern on the printed map (at least that’s my excuse). Others obviously didn’t have these problems though as the results show that Crickmore Junior took 23 minutes off my time. Emma had a tiring morning having walked round the white with the Broderick girls and then gone round the string course. Christine also put my run to shame by squeezing in a first place on the green before we rushed off to a children’s party.

We had a fun weekend of orienteering blessed by some good weather. On Saturday it was the Winchester Urban Race. This started and finished at the Rugby Club and the 1:5000 map stretched south to the Cathedral and Wolsey Castle. If you think city racing is all about tricky route choices influence by narrow cut-throughs, dead-ends, and control sites where the side of the feature is all important, then the event wouldn’t have disappointed you.Although my GPS seemed to suffer a bit in amongst all of the buildings, you can see an approximation to my route on RouteGadget. I found it hard to read the detail on the run and consequently all of my route choices were made standing still. This probably accounts for the fact that, although I could potentially have saved a bit of time on some legs (e.g. heading south 11 to 12), in general I wasn’t far off the best route. Where I really wasted time though was on the second loop which I proceeded to try and execute backwards, heading from 18 to 21. On realising my error at 21 I failed to spot the route through the Great Hall and took the long route round to 19. At least, on realising where I was, I then took the short route back to 20. A couple of minutes wasted which probably moved me down from 2nd place to 4th.

On Sunday we went over to Gosport for the British Sprint Champs at HMS Sultan – a Navy base looking much like an academic campus but with a few hangers, helicoptors and two massive Palmerston Forts scattered around! Here the route choices were much simpler (typically left or right of the building) with the focus more on clean execution. Things were going reasonably well for me in the first round until 17 where I attempted to cut through the green. I came out in the wrong place and then when turning, slipped on mud covered concrete and came down hard on my right knee putting a hole through my tights and in to my knee. In the break before the second round I made a trip to the first aiders to get some of the mud cleaned out of the holes!

Start times for the second round had the slowest finishers on round one off first. Sadly the way this worked out meant Christine and I couldn’t both get to our allocated start times. I went off two minutes in front of Ed Catmur. Things started well enough but, as my route shows, something went wrong at number 8. I think I just failed to take in the first row of building but that still doesn’t account for why I then turned left. I then wasted more time at 11 when we disappeared in to the dark tunnels of the fort. I’d failed to appreciate that all of the relevant junctions weren’t going to be lit and had to backtrack to the dark side-turning I wanted. Ed was then on his way in to the fort as I went from 12 to 13.

I managed to hold off Ed until 16 and then attempted to cling on to the finish, bloodying myself again on the thorny hedge at 18. Ed’s superior speed undoubtedly accounts for some of the 5 minutes he beat me by in the overall results. Just a shame I couldn’t pull another 10 seconds out of the bag in the second round to move up to second place.

Christine decided not to go out for a late run round the course. Emma seemed to have enjoyed the day immensely though. Probably the combination of ice lollies being on sale and lots of time spent playing in a patch of gravel with the other children. Even better was the fact that we managed to keep her awake on the way home so she went out like a light at bedtime! All in all, a good weekend of orienteering.

Having failed to respond to a call for runners from SOC for the Harvester night relays due to it being my Dad’s 80th birthday on Saturday, I rather guiltily agreed to step-in and complete a team for JOK. The (unwritten) rules state that JOK members should run for their first claim clubs in preference if needed and consequently Jon Cross moved up to the FVO team at the last minute. Fortunately John Embrey was then able to locate a replacement ex-Oxonian at the last minute and the team was once again complete. That is, until Saturday, when Helen Gardener fell foul of an illness. With Jon Marsden prepared to run two consecutive night legs, we were able to complete all seven legs but sadly that would make us non-competitive.

I was due to run last leg so, having arrived at a rather damp Eridge Park near Tunbridge Wells, I located John who would wake me in the morning, pitched my tent, and went to bed. This was with the aid of a couple of paracetamol to dull the earache that had been getting worse since Friday evening. I woke every couple of hours during the night as other runners came and went and it was readily apparent that we weren’t making as good progress as we might have hoped. When John went out on 5th leg it was looking likely that I’d be in the mass start at 8:30am and this proved to be the case.

I wasn’t particularly upset about being in the mass start. If I’m going to have to run 12km after a disturbed night’s sleep then I’d much rather do it in the company of a few other people! I was out in front for the first six controls and then, having taken a wide sweep in to seven, I was caught by Keith Masson of Mole Valley. We then had a good race round the rest of the course exchanging the lead numerous times. I enjoyed my run and cleared enough mucous out my nose that my ear felt much better! (Unfortunately, that was short lived and today I have antibiotics for a middle ear infection.) I can’t claim it was a particularly sociable event though – I didn’t see or hear two of the members on my team!

20100509 Harvester GPX

After a bit of indecision, Christine finally decided that she wouldn’t run on the Saturday of the British Orienteering Champs due to a calf injury but we would all go up to Cannock Chase for the weekend and she would still run in the relay. This meant I could move my individual start to a late time and we could drive up to Rugeley on the Saturday morning rather than having to stay up on the Friday night. This probably meant we missed the worst of the bank holiday traffic and we actually had a very smooth journey arriving in pleny of time.

Last time I ran at Abraham’s Valley and Wolseley Park it was on M21 Elite at the JK. Given that my overall fitness has headed in just one direction in the intervening years I had made the sensible decision to run M21 Long this time round. Ed Catmur started on the Elite course at the same time as me and, as they had a similar loop with some common controls to start with, he provided a good incentive to run hard from the start. Unfortunately he disappeared from sight on the way to my fifth control and two controls later I became really unstuck. It took  two attempts from different attack points to eventually locate the correct re-entrant in the middle of all of the greenery at number seven wasting me around three minutes. (See RouteGadget for the gory detail.) Judging by the splits, I wasn’t the only one to have trouble here. In particular, Geoff Ellis lost over seven minutes here sinking his chances of a win.

From this point onwards I was on my own but was enjoying myself running through some undulating but generally runnable terrain. I even managed not to make any great blunders when it came to the ‘technical’ quarry section. Even so, I was pretty shocked when I looked at my splits printout at the finish and it showed that I was in first place. I was well aware, however, that James Williams had the last start time on my course and was more than capable of beating my time. I met him coming out of the download tent just as the prize giving started…

He had beaten me by 24 seconds. It was a shame as a) it was my birthday and b) it is the last year that I will run in the 21 age class. However, I came in to the race simply expecting to be somewhere in the top 5 and had by no means had a clean run so I was happy enough to take second place on the podium and collect my BOC 2010 water bottle. (No medals for M21L as we’re a self-selecting bunch who aren’t prepared to run the Elite!) After a slice of birthday cake out the back of the car we retired to the delights of Stafford Holiday Inn Express and the attached pub.

The next day we returned to the same venue for the relays. The weather had taken a turn for the worse but thankfully the rain never really came to anything. Christine had been moved up in to SOC’s first team on Women’s Short as her calf wasn’t as bad as someone elses! Tamsin Moran came in third and Christine managed to hold on to sixth place. Jane Morgan then pulled them up to an impressive second place. Duncan consequently managed a second trip up on to the podium to collect another water bottle (and a medal this time – where’s the justice there?!).

I went out in penultimate position on second leg of Men’s Premiere. Hard to push yourself knowing that your third leg runner intends to walk round but I managed to reel in a few runners on a fairly clean run and come a respectable 10th place on my leg.

We had another smooth journey back home to round off what was a fun and successful birthday weekend.