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.

20100424 Southampton Common GPX

Southampton Orienteering Club’s Summer Series kicked off today at Stoke Park Woods in glorious sunshine. There looked to be a reasonable turnout with plenty of new faces (the series being designed to pull in beginners as well as satisfying the desire of club members to have more local events). Christine went round the green course and I took Emma and Duncan around the yellow. I’ve been to the woods a couple of times before for RR10 races but have either been going too fast or, more likely, been too out of breathe, to notice the forest itself. There was talk of brashing but at least from the tracks it looked like a nice piece of compact woodland. More importantly for Emma, there were lots of streams for her to play in. We were back home by lunchtime which is a major plus. I’ve undoubtedly ruined my chance in the scoring system for the series by not running today. However there were a few other people missing, most notably due to the antics of Eyjafjallajoekull leaving them stranded in various parts of Europe. If we ever get our summer hols booked then there’s a fair chance we’ll miss 2 or 3 of the events later in the series anyway. The next event is on Southampton Common in a week’s time so see you there!

For the JK Relays we returned to Braunton Burrows. I was running third leg on the JK trophy behind Matt Whipple and Sam Massey. Matt got off to a steady start despite getting a foot in his face in the scramble for the third control. Sam then picked us up one place on the short middle leg. I didn’t get off to a good start, visiting one of the other gaffles on the first leg despite not having anyone to lead me there. In fact, my feeling was that there were far too many gaffles on the course as, although there were certainly other runners about on my course, I never relt I was running the same course as any of them, part of the fun of a relay. In a sprint finish I came in just behind Duncan Archer in 17th place. This would have put us in the top half of the results. Sadly it wasn’t to be. When I downloaded it seemed I had run straight past control number 6. I’m still not quite sure why – I think I was just running too hard and switched my attention to the wrong circle. It’s a long while since I’ve been disqualified in a relay – let’s hope it’s a long time until it happens again!

Our accommodation has a wonderful view over Saunton Sands and Braunton Burrows which meant that we didn’t have far to travel to today’s event. I drove Christine down for her run and took Emma around the string course. Emma enjoyed running up and down the dunes so much that we had to collect all of the off-string controls (although the walk to and from the start was a bit much for her, particularly with all the puddles to jump in). The enjoyment was increased by the copious amounts of sunshine! There were 4 hours between split starts so I could drive everyone back to the cottage, have lunch, and then drive back for my run!

As my GPS track shows, I failed to make the most of a child free preparation to my run and ended up returning to the start kite before eventually locating the first control! That put me 5 minutes behind the leaders and I never really recovered. I struggled to interpret the complex contour detail on the 1:15,000 map and always felt myself lucky if I did hit a control spot on. I was 7th on the day but 8 minutes behind the leader which put me 8th over the two days. Others in our accomdation faired much better with Christine 3rd on W21S, Mark 2nd on M50L and Alice winning W50L.

On my return, the Easter bunny had visited our garden and Emma enjoyed hunting out the chocolate eggs, even if she couldn’t seem to see them even when they were right in front of her face!

I arrived at the start two minutes late for my call-up but with two minutes to spare before my start time. Typically, nobody asked to see a whistle or why I didn’t have a number. Having picked up the map though I had to run back two boxes to check the board I’d run past earlier to ensure I was doing the right course! Things improved after that and in general I had a reasonable run on M21L with no major blunders. It was hard work though with much of the forest reduced to a large mud bath and at times the course just seemed to be designed to take us in to every corner of the map. I ended up in 6th place, a respectable 2 minutes down on second place although Geoff Ellis was a further 3 minutes ahead.

Having exchanged my parents for Christine’s, this morning we packed everything up in to the car and headed to nearby Bicton College for the JK Sprint Race. The college grounds provided a mixture of open fields, woodland and a complex of buildings. I was running M21E and the courses started out across the fields before heading in the to the woodland. This is where I faultered a couple of times, struggling with the large scale for what is otherwise classic orienteering terrain, as shown by my GPS track on RouteGadget. That was more than enough to see me way down in the results. After some sunshine, the rain returned in force whilst we waited for Christine to finish. Ambulances aren’t an uncommon sight at orienteering events given the nature of the sport but the arrival of a police car is always somewhat worrying. It was only later in the day that we heard the tragic news that Dave Stubbs from Berkshire Orienteers had passed away whilst out on his course.

20100315 Green Course, Dibden Inclosure GPX

When I reached three for the second time I then had a little tow behind Anthony Squire. I couldn’t keep up for long though and by number nine he had disappeared off in to the distance leaving me to trudge up the hill to ten on my own. I made a bit of a dubious route choice 14 to 15 but needed a bit of a break from the forest which the track run provided. I stumbled again at 17, following one of the myriad of unmapped ditches off to the east. Overall I enjoyed myself though and didn’t do too badly in the results. You can see my route on RouteGadget. Perhaps what made the day was the glorious sunshine. Despite the snow on the ground, it really did feel quite warm standing in the clearing by download with just a short-sleeved top on.

It was, however, hard work persuading Christine to go to the event the following day at Lydney Park and in many ways I wish I hadn’t. Due to snow on the parking field they were bussing competitors from an industrial estate in Lydney and that was always going to be a bit of a nightmare with split starts. Christine was off first and, as there was little to do around the car park, I decided to take Emma and Duncan on the bus. It was a bit of a trek from the bus stop to the finish area and Emma didn’t seem too interested in doing the string course by the time we got there. She sat down in the snow eating her snack and complained about having a cold bottom and the bright sunshine reflecting off the snow in to her eyes. When Christine came back she wasn’t exactly filled with glowing praise for the area: steep, muddy and brambly. I was glad to hand Duncan over at this point having been carrying him around for about two hours.

When the time finally came for my run I felt very sluggish climbing up the hill to the first control.  I then managed to overshoot the fourth control due to being too far up the slope (although the control I hit on the knoll beyond must have been further up the hill than shown on the map). By the seventh control I had been out half an hour which might not have been so bad if there weren’t 34 controls on my course. I had already started to think about where I might cut short and concluded that if I hadn’t done half the course in an hour then I’d miss out the last 10 controls. Unfortunately I reached the mid-point at around 61 minutes and decided I should plough on.

I made a bad route choice to 25 and found myself sliding down a steep muddy bank on my bum when I should have crossed to the other side of the valley much earlier. Then on the way to 28 I found myself wading through a mixture of young conifers and brambles in the open area. I was pretty gone by this point having had nothing to eat but a homous sandwich since breakfast about six hours earlier. The next two legs were a complete disaster as shown on RouteGadget. On the way to 29 I was far too far east and found myself staggering through the dark green and had to relocate off the open. Then 30 was just a nightmare. I must have run with three metres of the control (a supposedly large boulder) on my first pass. I then took me around another 20 minutes to find the control which was in a pit in front of the boulder. NGOC are renowned for hiding controls and they had surpassed themselves on this one.

I eventually finished in 2:13, absolutely exhausted and not best pleased at having to wait ages for the return bus. Then I discovered at download that I have a version 5 SportIdent card and I should have picked up a loan card at registration as mine wouldn’t register times for any more than 30 controls. (I’ve ordered a new one now!) At least the results were better for Christine’s family. She won W21S and her brother won my course (which I shall never live down!) We eventually got home about 6:30pm with Duncan having grumbled half the way. Not the best day of orienteering I’ve had.

We went to SOC’s local event at Anderwood in the New Forest today. No string course this time so I took Emma and Duncan round the Yellow course whilst Christine nipped round the Green. Duncan nodded off half way round and Emma spent most of the time in the running buggy. Christine passed us on our way from the last control and came back to meet us. This meant I could head back to the car with dozing Duncan whilst Emma climbed about on a conveniently placed ring of tree stumps. They had only just made it back to download (Emma with a big stick in each hand) as I set off for the start to do the Blue.

It wasn’t the most exciting of courses. I think I was suffering a bit from giving blood on Thursday as I didn’t really have the speed to make the most of the runnable forest. It was pretty cold too and I had to move my Emit brick from my little finger when I could no longer feel it. I took just over 40 minutes for 6.5km or so which is reasonably respectable. I’m not sure whether there will be any results published for the event. The best bit had to be the fact that we were back home within 4 hours of leaving having both had a run.

2010021 Anderwood Blue Course GPX

I was running Black/M21 which, at 10.8km was theoretically on the short side but plenty long enough for me. The going was fast with the bracken having been killed off by the snow and ice so generally there was no excuse not to go straight except for the odd minor deviation to take in to account the short sharp inclines (Star Posts is one of the few areas in the South East where you can actually navigate by the contours). Extra interest was added to the course by the addition of a film set (Harry Potter supposedly) and coming across a mountain biker being tended to by paramedics which had been joined by an air ambulance the next time I passed.

I had only a couple of minor wobbles: following everyone else straight out the start rather than turning 90 degrees left and then number 7 where I wasted a bit of time in the series of gulleys. I was glad to catch Alan Cherry towards the end and, with the addition of Joe Mercer speeding past, this provided some incentive to keep my tired legs going. As the results show, Joe whopped me by around 10 minutes but I’m still fairly happy with 5th place and it would seem that also makes me SCOA Champion! I forgot my GPS but I’ve drawn my route up here.

For some reason I decided to enter the ‘Military Challenge’ Mountain Bike Orienteering event yesterday. This was despite not even owning a mountain bike (I borrowed one from the cycle club at work). What I hadn’t bargained on at the time I entered was that there would be lots of snow on the ground! Things started to go wrong even before the start. I had not brought my normal cycle jacket (well, it’s Christine’s actually) as the zip broke but what I had forgotten was that my cycle gloves were in the rear pocket. Luckily I did at least have another pair of gloves with me.

I pedalled off to the start and was a bit surprised to be given 6 maps (I had rather rashly entered the 25km medium course after some goading from Christine). The start was on top of a spur and I’ll freely admit that I wheeled my bike down the steep snow covered single-track path that weaved through the small conifers. Once I did get going I then managed to drop my compass (it was tucked in the side of the Heath Robinson map holder that I had constructed to attach to my handlebars). I saw it go but despite only having a 5 metre section of track to search it still took me about five minutes to find it again in the snow. The navigation was easy enough not to need a compass – I just didn’t want to lose it!

I managed to get through the first three controls without too much difficulty. I did briefly wonder what the high wall on the route to number three was all about until I passed a road called ‘Broadmoor Drive’. I was a bit indecisive on the route from 3 to 4. The maps consisted of a mixture of orienteering and OS maps and I wasn’t sure whether we were permitted to use the footpaths on the OS maps. It was whilst I was making a detour back to the road that things went drastically wrong: the left crank fell off! I found the screw but the small toolkit I was carrying wasn’t going to help me re-attach it. I walked my bike out to the road and asked a passing family for assistance. They directed me to a bike shop just 10 minutes walk away!

Thanks go to the guys at Berkshire Cycles who put the crank back on but they warned me that it was deformed by this point and I shouldn’t ride on. They were right and I made it back as far as Upper Star Posts before it fell off again despite my attempts to only use the left pedal lightly. This time the screw was lost to the snow and I just ran back with the bike with the crank in my hand. (Running with a bike is considerably easier when there is no pedal to get in the way!)

So, my first MTBO event was not exactly a great success but it was a lovely day to be out with the sun shining on the snow. Getting ready for the event was a bit of a faff – all the usual orienteering gear plus everything for the bike as well. My makeshift map board worked reasonably well although I think you really do need one that rotates. Trying to work out which path to take at one of the massive Star Posts junctions is very difficult when the map isn’t orientated. At £35+ that’s not something I’m going to buy in a hurry though so perhaps I should just stick to two legs in future!

I went out on the brown course and was pleasantly surprised by the area. It’s a while since I’ve run there and I think it must mainly have been during the summer as I just had memories of wading through brambles and nettles. There was a little bramble about but generally the area was runnable with the patches of green tending to add to the navigational challenge rather than detracting from the running. The map is in dire need of an update but typically the changes were what you might expect e.g. areas that were marked as open were now full of young trees. Andy Nash had done a good job planning the course and had avoided the temptation to make us run up and down the steeps hills too many times.

I made a few blunders. On 4-5 I was horribly confused about which east-west path I had ended up on (the white ride on the map having become a fully fledged path). Having judged that I was still quite close to the field I started looking on the wrong side of the path. The situation was rectified fairly quickly when I found one of the other large depressions without a control in it. The other major mistake was at 8. No idea what I was doing really but I do remember thinking that the north line was a path which never helps! My only other error was failing to consider route choice on the long leg from 11 to 12. I just stayed fairly close to the line but in retrospect I would have climbed less if I’d gone to the east.

I did manage to beat Sarah Rollins (only because she messed up number one) but, as the title says, Sam Massey beat me soundly. Results.

20091213 Queen Elizabeth Country Park, Brown, GPX

I really enjoyed the event. My legs were pretty tired from last weekend and, around control 8, I thought I’d probably had about enough despite only being a third of the way round the course. It was Classic New Forest terrain though making the most of the lovely runnable Inclosures. Nothing particularly technical but Jack Hutchison had done a good job of keeping things interesting. There was still the opportunity to waste time through sloppy compass work. At 8 I was too far to the right but didn’t waste too long bouncing back off the track beyond and, at 17, I failed to twig that the path I was on was disappearing off downhill and hence not the one on the map. On the whole I was remarkably consistent, finishing in 6th place on M21L. Perhaps I should try running slower more often!

The rest of the family also seem to have enjoyed themselves at the event. Emma walked (and even ran parts of) the entire string course. Large puddles certainly seemed to increase the interest for her. Duncan, for his part, didn’t seem to mind the pouring rain too much. Having failed to help at the event, I should thank my fellow club members for all of their hard work – particularly those on the wet early shift!

20091102 November Classic, Black GPX

A wet Saturday dawned and Neil felt well enough for us to set off for the event centre in Builth Wells. As we were bussed north the rain gradually ceased and the clouds lifted. As we stood on the start line the sun was even shining although, as we crested the hill, we were hit by a strong wind. The navigation wasn’t at all challenging on the first day, with easy control sites and good visibility. With such a late start we also didn’t suffer too badly from the tussocks. In fact, the purple line on the map could have easily represented a linear marsh, flattened by the hordes of competitors that had passed before us. This meant that on, what was probably meant to be the long route choice leg, there was little reason not to go direct. The weather had taken a turn for the worse by this point and the wind was now driving rain at us.

The overnight campsite was nicely located although, arriving at about five o’clock as another rain shower passed through, there wasn’t much opportunity for socialising. During a trip out to use the toilets I discovered that, whereas the splits we were given had us just over an hour behind the leaders on our course, we now appeared to be just under an hour behind and consequently had a place right at the back of the chasing start. The wind kept up all night and I wasn’t disappointed not to have to spend longer awake under the flapping canvas of our tent than necessary.

Being in the chasing start also meant that I actually got to do some navigation on Sunday which certainly added to the interest. We overshot the first control by a couple of 100 metres but everything went pretty well otherwise. It also mean that we had to make our own tracks through the tussocks although these were less pronounced than those on Saturday. The wind was still pretty strong and we were grateful to turn out of it after the first few controls. Although not completely dry, there was also much less rain than the previous day. Neil still wasn’t 100% but we were running the downhills and the smoother flat sections. I can’t say we were particularly impressed by control 9 though which involved a steep drop of over 100 metres only to have to climb straight back up again.

We were somewhat surprised to discover that we were in 14th place when we got back to Builth Wells and downloaded but I suspect that, as on the Saturday, the later runners had a better time of it, and in the final results we have dropped to 24th place. Still, pretty good given that two days earlier we weren’t even sure that we were going to start!

You can see our routes for day 1 and day 2 on RouteGadget.

20091017 Avon Tyrrell GPX

The results have me 11.5 minutes down on Richard Barrett and it’s easy to see how that could be the case. Anyway, I’ve no idea when we’re going orienteering again so no imminent danger of setting the record straight!

Hilltop and Dibden Bottom – Brown GPX

Today was the annual Dorset Coast Path Relay laid on ostensibly to raise funds for the South-West Junior Squad. The idea is to run the length of the South-West Coast Path within the county of Dorset (so Lyme Regis to Sandbanks) in as quick as time as possible using as many people as you can muster. This year numbers were down both in the SOC team and overall with only 5 teams entering. It was an early start and our car only arrived in Lyme Regis just in time for me to jump out and run up the hill to ensure that Ian Moran was in place. We then dashed over to the other side of the town to give the Morans a hand up the hill on the other side.

That was pretty much the theme for the rest of the day: jumping in and out of the car to dash up short bits of hill in the rain. I had two longer sections to run: from West Bay to Burton Bradstock and, much later in the day, the 7 miles from above Chapman’s Pool to Durlston Head. These proved to be well suited to me with only a few short steep climbs and otherwise lots of fast undulating running.

I’m slightly concerned by the knee pain that seemed to dog me every time I got out of the car. It’s over 10 years since I had runner’s knee and I’m wondering what might have brought it back. I haven’t been doing much in the way of running but perhaps I need to take a look at the setup of my bike having been cycling in to work every day since moving house (albeit only 2 miles).

The day wasn’t without incident. Peter Smith managed to get stopped (briefly) by a helicopter perched on the cliff top, Neil managed to run a 7.5 mile leg rather than the 2.5 miles he was supposed to be doing having somehow missed a changeover with Peter, and the drivers were held up en-route to Sandbanks due to an overturned car.

Wessex had a massive lead of over an hour and a half at the finish taking about 7.5 hours. This was not particularly surprising as they were already starting to pull away before we’d got out of Lyme Regis, largely due to the large numbers in their team. There was some good competition between the other teams though with places being swapped regularly along the route. We finished in second place about 15 minutes ahead of Wimborne and half an hour ahead of the Junior Squad and BKO.

West Bay to Burton Bradstock GPX

Chapman’s Pool to Durlston Head GPX