We went orienteering for the first time in ages today and it showed! We were down at Dibden early to set out the string course (yes – it’s come to that!) so my brain wasn’t entirely engaged. Things started out well enough on my course with reasonable speed and not much requried in the way of navigation. On the way to five I somehow decided I was running along the fence to the south of the control and when I didn’t see a bend in it decided I had overshot. It was only after wasting about three minutes that I eventually hit the open ride and twigged what I had done.
At seven I was just careless, picking up the ditch to the north of the control, which seemed to be in some kind of unmapped re-entrant and reaching the track beyond the control before realising what had happened. Then at ten I wasted another three minutes or so. This time I failed to see the small re-entrant tucked under the edge of the circle on the map and hence when I started descending I assumed that I had overshot. By the look of Splitsbrowser I wasn’t the only one to have trouble with this control.
One small blessing was that this allowed Tom Bray to overtake me which gave me some incentive to put some effort in for the remainder of the course which consisted largely of some pretty dull legs through the heather.
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!
Dave,
I hope you improve before the OMM since if we rely on my orienteering ability
we might still be in Wales for Christmas….
cheers,
Neil
Neil,
I might well be in Wales for Xmas anyway but that’s another story. Thankfully I think the OMM is much more likely to be the legs that I did okay on. I’ll also have someone to chase after – you!
Dave