David Currie

Yesterday was the first SOC street event of the year. Courtesy of Colin Hicks there was an hour’s score event starting at The Crown in Highfield, Southampton. There was a fairly obvious loop collecting in the high scoring controls in Swaythling which meant most people set off in the same direction. Having crossed back over the river it was then time to see how many of the remaining controls could be picked up on the way back to the pub. I was fairly confident by then that I should be able to get them all and made it back in just over 57 minutes. You can see my route on Google Maps.

These events are now every three weeks going on in to the Summer with the next one starting at 7:30pm from the Oak Road Car Park, Dibden Purlieu on 31 January.

SOC had a district event at Anderwood today. After helping out at registration I went for a turn round the Brown course. Must have started reasonably well as I was in joint first place at the second control but my legs were really too tired to sustain that pace. The area is pretty runnable (give or take the occasional marsh) so running strength counts. Indeed, if you’re feeling weak then you just end up adding more distance trying to stick to the paths or contour around the hills when you should just peg it in a straight line.

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Headed up the M3 this morning for the BAOC Around Aldershot Race. This was primarily a Mountain Bike Orienteering (MTB-O) competition but, due to the small matter of not having a mountain bike, I was left running the 18.4km Long-O. This turned out to be pretty much a 20km trail race. The controls were all pretty easy as they were reachable by the mountain bikers and there was a lot of dead running whilst you got out on to the Mytchett and Ash maps. Only there could you reap the benefit of being on foot by cutting a few corners.

Still, it was all good fun and I made it back just before the rain started in a time of 96 minutes. The results show that GG took a ‘mere’ 14 minutes out me although, in my defence, my slowest splits were those off the paths where I was being careful of my ankle. Rob Little looks to have a good strong finish, pushing me down in to third place.

A frosty morning saw Petr, Andy, Matthew and myself heading up to Cold Ash near Newbury for the BKO district event. None of us had checked the details so it was lucky Andy got the 9:05 train not the 10:05 as last start was eleven o’clock due to the Yvette Baker Trophy final that followed. We obviously weren’t the only ones though as just after I started, they began to push competitors through at half minute intervals to get everyone out in time.

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After a frustrating week at work it was great to get out in to the Forest for a run today, particularly with the sun putting in an appearance. Mike Yeo had laid on a local event at Knightwood Oak (doing himself an injury in the process). The longest course was a green so no excuse for not running hard.

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We headed over to the Forest of Dean today for Bristol Orienteering Klub‘s district event at Moseley Green. I went out on the brown course and was pleased to discover that the planner’s primary concern seemed to be to ensure that competitors saw the best bits of the area and didn’t have to fight their way through too much of the bramble infested woodland (even if this meant the odd dog leg in to and back out of a control).

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