David Currie

2020 started much as 2019 had ended: with lots of activity. In the first week alone I’d done the running club’s New Year hash, the Hampshire XC Champs, and a CC6 at Badger Farm, with another one at Janesmoor two weeks later. In addition to running, there was plenty of orienteering to be had, with events at Fritham, Star Posts, Denny Wood, Mark Ash Wood, and Black Water in the first couple of months. There was also SOC and South-Central Junior Squad training to attend.

Orienteering wasn’t restricted to the forest though. I went to a Wessex Night League event around Marchwood, and the club’s monthly MapRun events were still a regular feature. We put on January’s event in Eastleigh on what was a particularly damp evening. February brought a fiendish course around Badger Farm and Oliver’s Battery in Winchester with the added bonus that, with the children away for half term, both Christine and I could stay to the pub afterwards. Sadly their absence also meant an opportunity for me to redecorate the bathroom including my first, and hopefully last, attempt at plastering a ceiling!

There was a railway theme to this period, starting with a trip to the Signal Box in Romsey. We’ve probably passed the entrance road hundreds of times but never been in. It was actually quite fun and we whiled away an hour or more there. A week later, we went to the Southampton Model Railway Exhibition at Barton Peveril College. There were lots of grey-haired men in evidence but both the children enjoyed themselves. It then wasn’t long before Duncan had purchased himself some track on eBay to supplement the small loop he’d got for Christmas and we were fitting them to a large board, suitably sized to slide away under his bed.

March brought a couple of INSET days for Duncan. Christine took him to the BlueReef aquarium on one, I took him for a bike ride in the New Forest on the other. At least, it was a bike ride for Duncan. My rear derailleur snapped part way round and I ended up jogging along pushing my bike for about 5k until we got back to Lyndhurst where the bike shop shortened my chain. Having filled up on cake in one of Lyndhurst’s many tea shops, we then set off back to Ashurst to catch the train home. Certainly an adventure!

That weekend, we headed to Monmouth and this was the first indication in my diary of what was to come: “have to be on our best behaviour hygiene wise”. Covid-19 had hit the news and Christine’s Mum, who has an immunosuppressive disease, was potentially particularly vulnerable. We had a lovely, if blustery, walk up Sugar Loaf on Saturday and went to the CompassSport Cup event near Gloucester on our way home, where SOC qualified for the final.

The following day, the government announced that non-essential travel should be avoided at which point the JK and British Champs were cancelled. Two days later, it was announced that schools would close at the end of the week. Priority for online shopping being given to the elderly and vulnerable, I joined the long queues at the supermarket one morning to be greeted with shelves empty of staples (the stockpiling of toilet paper was to become a national joke). At the end of that week, we went to the library to discover it had closed the day before. That weekend, we went for a walk and a cycle ride – what were to become staples for the months to follow.

Home schooling started the next week. Emma was well-catered for with her secondary school continuing a regular timetable over Microsoft Teams. Duncan, meanwhile, was sent a few suggestions of things to do and left to get on with it. Another tradition of lockdown was born: a morning lesson over FaceTime with Granny Sue.

Perhaps the hardest part for us was the mandate that people could only go out once a day for exercise which often meant a choice between a walk with the children or a run. Running with the children zooming along on scooters was one solution. Cycling together with the children also became much more appealing as the roads were largely empty of cars. At least the weather was smiling on us and we were certainly grateful to have a garden in which to enjoy break times.

Last weekend it was the OMM in the Black Mountains, South Wales. Christine’s parents had offered to mind the children so Christine and I were running the Medium Score together. There was a biting wind but blue skies as we set off on Saturday morning. There was some early indecision but we soon settled down to a steady mountain marathon pace. As the morning went on, the skies started to look increasingly ominous and, as we cross one bit of particularly bleak hillside, the snow began and persisted for long enough to paint the mountainside white. We reached the campsite with around twenty minutes to spare – not long enough to have fitted anything else in.

It was a long night in the campsite, made more bearable by being able to chat to Christine brother and his wife in the tent next to us. Due to the cold, we both ‘slept’ in all of our clothes, including waterproofs. We were certainly glad to discover that, as third mixed pair, we qualified for the chasing start and had an hour less to spend in the campsite in the morning.

Although we removed a layer, we both kept our waterproofs on for the whole of the second day. Christine’s knee was giving her grief (a likely outcome even before we started the weekend) and, as a consequence, we were setting a pretty stately pace. We reined in our plans as we went round and, although we finished with another 25 minutes to spare, at the speed we were going it still wouldn’t have got us another checkpoint. We were 47th on the second day which brought us down from 13th to 28th over the two days. Still respectable but not what we would have hoped for had we both been fit and healthy. On the plus side, it did mean we could slip away before the prize giving and make it home in reasonable time!

If you watch the promotional video, you’ll catch a brief glimpse of us finishing on the first day around the 1:33 mark. Thanks to Christine’s dad who purchased the image above where we were reunited with the children at the finish. You can also find our routes from Day 1 and 2 on RouteGadget.

We enjoyed last year’s OMM Lite sufficiently that we signed up again this year. The venue had shifted to the Forest of Dean, another area we know reasonably well through orienteering and its proximity to Christine’s parents. In a repeat of my marathon weekend, it was set to be a scorcher and we were grateful that the organisers took the decision to drop waterproofs from the kit to be carried!

This time we had a much better idea about the distance that we were likely to have to cover to fill seven hours on Saturday although that didn’t stop us re-planning continuously. Things didn’t start well with a run along the road, a detour down a dead-end, followed by hacking through the forest past the wild boar. That, at least, taught us the extent to which we should trust all the tracks on the map!

We headed out of the forest to pick up a 50-pointer out at Symonds Yat but decided not to go further afield and, after picking up a few more checkpoints, headed back into the forest again. At that point, there wasn’t much for it but to sweep around the bottom of the map and back up the eastern edge. Christine was definitely fading towards the end and wasn’t best pleased with my suggestion to squeeze in one extra checkpoint before the finish. The unexpected lap of the camping field meant that we were docked one point for being 19 seconds late back. Much to our surprise, this still left us 49 points clear of the next pair! (My watch began to die so our efforts are spread across part 1 and part 2 on Strava.)

Christine switched to trainers for the Sunday in an attempt to pacify a rather angry looking blister on her feet but, otherwise, we didn’t feel too bad setting out for a further five hours. The map was centred on the forest this time which provided some much-needed shade. We didn’t have to think a great deal initially with the first three checkpoints being ones we had visited on Saturday. Christine accepted that we needed to cross the valley to the controls on the eastern edge of the map but the climb back out of Soudley was pretty unpleasant, particularly as the path we were on disappeared amongst fallen trees.

We made it back in time and, although we didn’t clock the biggest total for the day (guest ultra-runner Markus Scotney sped past us at the end having knocked off another 100 points), it was enough to secure a victory. Winning prizes for the first mixed pair, as well as first place, certainly meant we had a tidy haul of OMM vouchers to show for our efforts! The 23 miles covered on Sunday brought the total for the weekend to over 55 miles, very similar to last year and only with around 200m less climb.

The podium photo also shows off our cheer squad with all but two of the children in the front row being relatives (the other two were a reunion from last year’s event). Sarah and Sue, in particular, had done a wonderful job of keeping them all amused whilst we were out running. Our two had done the orienteering on Sunday. Duncan secured a second on M10 whilst Emma had an absolute epic, spending nearly an hour and a half on her orange course! To round off an excellent weekend, they also ran in a sweltering children’s race at Devauden on Bank Holiday Monday.