On Saturday we went to the club’s local event at Matley on the outskirts of Lyndhurst. I went out first on the blue and got off to a bad start, wasting nearly four minutes on the first control. I’d failed to appreciate that, although a nice example of runnable New Forest terrain, unlike most events, it did also require a degree of navigation. I wasted a bit more time at 7 and 9 before I settled in to a reasonable rhythm for the rest of the course. Perhaps not surprising though that I was nearly six minutes down on the winning time and only just added of Christine in the results. I then took over from Christine who was making slow going on the yellow course with the children (taking bikes round did not make for faster progress!) All in all a very enjoyable event and we even picked up a Christmas tree in Ashurst on our way home (we bought it – we didn’t just dig one up in the forest!).
Archive for the ‘Orienteering’ Category
Blue at Matley
Monday, December 10th, 2012On your bike
Wednesday, October 17th, 2012
On Saturday, after a bit of indecision, we finally decided that we’d go to the orienteering at Dibden Inclosure and not the Hants Cross-Country at Farley Mount (or, indeed, both). It was a lovely day but the orienteering was decidedly average. Dibden is not the most exciting of areas with only the occasional squiggle of contours to break up the otherwise featureless forest and marshy, heather strewn, open. After the first few controls, I even found myself checking that I had actually picked up the blue course map rather than the orange!
Emma and Duncan seemed to thoroughly enjoy the yellow course though. Plenty of mud to squelch through and Duncan walked the whole way round without any bribery or complaining. At Christine’s suggestion, we’d put the children’s bikes in. Nine months on, Duncan’s balance bike actually fits him. He particularly enjoyed the off-road riding although struggled a little with balancing whilst traversing slopes! Emma has never spent more than a few minutes at a time on the stabiliser free bike that she got for her birthday (other than when hooked up to the back of my bike) but that was all set to change. She started just scooting without her feet on the pedals. Then she would cycle with me holding on to the saddle and it was soon apparent that I was doing a lot less holding than on previous occasions. Once we hit the open, Emma just needed to help getting started and then she was off… Hopefully it is just the start of many fun filled years of cycling.
First London City Race
Saturday, September 22nd, 2012
It may have been the fifth City of London Race today but it was a first for us. Christine was running first and the rest of us headed in to the race venue (Kings College Students Union) to pick up my number and drop off a bag. We managed to lose Emma there as she raced off up the stairs but turned off at the toilet floor whilst Duncan and I carried on up to assembly. We were eventually re-united though and headed out in to the sunshine to await Christine’s return.
I enjoyed my run. I didn’t make any major mistakes (no dead-ends for example) but I made a few bad route choices. In particular, in the Barbican my eyes just glazed over looking at leg 9-10 and I decided to head out and around the roads. Even then, I failed to take the shortest route to get out to the road. That said, I lost at most a minute and a half and that’s making the big assumption that I would have executed the straighter route correctly. I don’t know whether my eye sight is failing but, in general, I couldn’t make any of the fine route choice decisions whilst on the run. I also wasn’t too impressed by the dust, bricks and mortar that raining down on me in one stairwell as some adjacent scaffolding was being removed. Even more so when I discovered I had to go back that way again!
Christine had taken the children off to see St Paul’s whilst I was running and then we had a trip along to Trafalgar Square (not sure what the children will have made of the SlutWalk demonstration!) and in to the National Gallery (it’s Art Week at school next week). Duncan had largely shunned the buggy that we’d brought with us but we were thankful for having brought it when he had a short nap in the gallery!
It was a good day out, helped by some sunshine, and I’m sure we’ll be back for more in the future
Navigating the Test
Saturday, September 8th, 2012
Iain McNally ponders his route to the finish.
I was on the third leg, from Stokehill to Middleton. This isn’t one I’d done before and I failed to recce the route which probably cost me a minute or so due to hesitations and two points where I set off down the wrong track. In both cases I realised my error within about 20 metres so no great harm done. From there the Morans (Ian and Tamsin) took the team down to Stockbridge. The Currie clan stopped off for their traditional dip in the Test at Chilbolton Common. The sun had brought the hordes out but it didn’t make the water any warmer!
By this point we were just 10 minutes behind my (unscientific) schedule. Kevin Bracher took us to Mottisfont and Philip Cooper from there to Romsey. Iain McNally was on the last leg down to Totton which is where things went a bit awry when he decided to check out the trout fishing possibilities. I’m not sure that it cost us any places but put us well over the five and half hours for the 44 mile route. The tide being in, Iain got even more intimate with the water on the way in to the finish. He didn’t, unlike one runner, try and build a bridge across!
Back to Dorset
Wednesday, September 5th, 2012
At the weekend we were back in Dorset, this time for the annual Coast Path Relay. Originally down to run the first leg in Lyme Regis again, we made our excuses as this year we would have to travel down on the morning of the event. We consequently joined in the action at Abbotsbury Castle where I helped with the hill up from the coast, Christine ran to the end of the castle, and I took over to the next road bend. We then went up to Hardy’s Monument for the kids to have a run around. Having met our team captain there, Christine picked up an extra leg to Kimmeridge Bay. I took over from there for my usual leg to Chapman’s Pool unfortunately this year without a hill team to help me up to Clavell Tower. By the final climb I was reduced to a walk and wasn’t travelling much faster than yet another KERNO hill team making their way back to the car!
Next stop was Studland Bay where the children had a good play on the beach and we enjoyed watching the displays by two Tornadoes and a Vulcan courtesy of the Bournemouth Air Festival. Sadly SOC had slipped some way off the pace of the other teams, not helped by a stray rock draining the oil from the sump of one of the team’s cars. There were still five of us to enjoy the final run along the beach to the finish line. We were greeted by a fly-by from a Spitfire and a Hurricane which perhaps reflects the more sedate pace of our team! The results speak for themselves.
Orienteering at Hursley
Tuesday, July 24th, 2012Anyway, I didn’t hear any complaints on the day which I suspect had as much to do with the sunshine as anything else. It was certainly good to see so many people staying around for the prize giving and barbecue afterwards. Christine and I picked up first place certificates for the series. We have been to all but one this year which, when set against the fact that we are currently slipping down the British Orienteering rankings having completed insufficient ranking events, says a lot about our orienteering at the moment! We got to know some new club members particularly well when we discovered that Duncan had turned the car lights on at some point and we needed their assistance to start the car.
Thanks go to IBM for allowing the event and in particular Rick Kellaway for his support. Hopefully this will be the first of many orienteering events at Hursley!
Summer (?) series returns
Saturday, April 14th, 2012We decided to sneak in a trip to the first event of the orienteering club’s summer series before Emma had to head off to a party. Unfortunately Southampton Common wasn’t at its summeriest with a steady drizzle eventually turning in to a downpour. Emma, Duncan and I went round the yellow whilst Christine had her run. We made it round the 2km course in just under 35 minutes which must be some kind of a record for Emma. We may even have to start her on some navigation soon! Duncan, meanwhile, stayed resolutely in the pushchair. The rest of the family then departed in the direction of Longdown Farm (with my lunch) and it was my turn to tackle the light green. Theoretically no real navigational challenge but I still wasted a minute at number 9 having failed to realise which clearing I had run up and another 30 seconds or so at 17 when I got ahead of myself on the map. That would have brought me under 4 min/k which would have been nice but I’ll settle for a first place in the results. It’s a shame I then got completely soaked cycling back home!
Hamptworth: dark and light
Monday, February 27th, 2012As RouteGadget shows, I made two major blunders. Everything started well enough but at the fifth control I was rather thrown by the presence of contours in the New Forest and turned up-hill just 10 metres short of the control. Actually, I think I was thrown because my attack point was supposed to be a ditch junction whereas, in the daylight, it was evident that the ditch on the map actually turns in to a veg boundary. I had more trouble with vegetation boundaries at 12 where it looks like I had the rhododendrum boundary out by 90 degrees.
Each of those mistakes cost me five minutes. On top of that, in the tussocks and brashings I was generally too cautious and when I finished I was third out of three and a good 25 minutes down on the leader. As it transpired, the remaining three runners in my class managed to take even longer so I can still claim a bronze medal!
On Sunday, the sun was shining again and we all went along for a fantastic day back at Hamptworth. I took the children round the string course whilst Christine ran. Duncan walked the whole way and both were pleased to see sweets at the finish rather than the usual SOC raisins! We then sat in the sun next to a large puddle adjacent to the finish waiting for Christine to return.
I found the area much more enjoyable in the daylight when it was possible to make use of more distant objects in the vague terrain. Two mistakes again on RouteGadget. The first at 8 where, in the presence of Tim Britton, I failed to realise that I had drifted to the north. Then another two minutes en-route to 12 where I failed to negotiate the rhodies successfully. I was six minutes down on Jack Benham so my running speed was definitely up on the previous night. I can’t quite work out where I’ll end up in the SCOA Champs as a result – probably second or third.
I got back to discover that Christine (with a little help from the sweets) had persuaded Emma to go round the string course twice more (on her own this time) and Duncan had even walked round again. All in all, a fun weekend of orienteering although given my aching legs today, not one to be repeated too frequently!
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