I’m on a course at work this week but stole out yesterday lunchtime to go to the BAOC event up at Farley Mount. I took 52 minutes for the 8.6km A course. Only one big mistake: at number twelve where I lost sight of the control coming off the path and headed towards the edge of the unmapped open assuming it was where the fence lay. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case and there wasn’t much left of the fence other than the odd post to guide me back to the control.
Although I was in first place when I rushed off back to work, the results show a different story with Dave Rollins knocking 7 minutes off my time and another six runners slipping in between me and him. I could have foreseen this though. It was difficult to predict the runnability of the white on the map with much of it being covered in brashings and brambles. This slowed me down considerably and I often took a circuitous route where a stronger runner would have gone straight.
If it makes you feel better, I was leading course B when I left (obviously I would have run the longer course, but only had limited time ;-)), but found that a young SARUM lass had beaten me….again.