Author: Oliver O'Brien

The annual “Festive Frolic” put on by my old club, ELO was this morning. This year, for the first time, it was at the John Muir Country Park (rather than Yellowcraig) and was on a newly updated map – half the map is on a flat plantation, and the other half is on the changing dunes of “Spike Island”. This year’s race was “Sud-O-Ku” – going to each control on the score reveals a symbol (with coordinate) to be added to a grid – once all the controls are done, the Sudoku puzzle can be solved and the first back with a completed puzzle is the winner. However, 50 other features on the map were flagged with tinsel and another symbol and coordinate, so if you couldn’t do the puzzle, you could run around hoping to see as many of these as possible. In the end, I spent too long trying to find the extra tinsel features, and by the time I sat down to solve the puzzle, it was too easy – and others were already back. One of them was Jamie Stevenson, the British Champion and UK squad member – he didn’t win. Once again, nice weather – cold, with a bit of snow in the air, but no rain or gloom. The complementary soup at the end was timely, though.

After last week’s walk to the start and then painful limp home, my sprain seemed to have fixed itself more quickly. So, it was yet another cold crisp morning that found me in yet another South East London forest.

I ran down a course – Blue, so as not to push my luck with the sprain – however I didn’t feel a thing until I stepped awkwardly on a log on the way to No. 2. I went very gingerly to 3 and 4, deciding to retire, before changing my mind as the pain quickly went away this time – and went on to finish 3rd out of 25 on the course – however, this is more symptomatic of the quality of competition on a Blue standard course instead of my normal Brown – I wasted at least 5-6 minutes between 2 and 4 due to worrying about the injury, and my pace was 10+mpk – I would normally do 8-9 on an area like that.

Joydens Wood is not a great area – it has a lovely central section with fast, pleasant running (it was yet another cold, crisp and sunny day) but most of the rest of the forest is covered in thick vegetation, even in December. Also there were a couple of map inconsistencies and a real bingo control at one point. Still, it was nice to get out of the house and around another new map.

Joydens Wood has a famous dyke running through it that was built 1400 years ago to keep the (Roman) Londoners out of Saxon Kent! The planner had some fun and routed the final couple of controls directly up the dyke – nice!

Mistake analysis:
1: Poor mapping [misleading detail around control]
2: Hesitation [injury!]
3: Hesitation/Poor route choice [quickly learnt to avoid all marked undergrowth on this map]
4: Hesitation [almost retired here]
10: Bingo control [in a pit in featureless, dense undergrowth]
11: Map-reading error
12: Poor mapping [control was 70m SE of indicated location, in gully]
14: Poor route choice/Navigational error

Most of these mistakes were pretty minor, still 8 on a 15 control course in an easy area – I’m clearly slacking at the moment! Mind you, 3 were through no fault of my own, so not the greatest map either.

A real cross country area, one glance at the map was enough to confirm the pace was fast. In the end, I didn’t really force myself to go as fast as I should have – but the map did have enough technical sections for proper orienteering. One particularly technical section, in a mine-field of pits, caused me a 3-4 minute mistake and a relocation. Shame there wasn’t much competition on the Brown course – the course was virtually deserted the entire way around. One of the most beautiful areas I have ever had the pleasure to run on, with enough technical sections to make it interesting – just very fast. Weather was good – a cold, crisp and sunny day, quite wet underfoot.

Mistake Analysis:
2: Parallel Error
8: Parallel Error
14: Navigational Error
17: Navigational Error
18: Poor Mapreading (Relocation)

2, 17 and 18 are all on the extract above. Fantastic detail in this section of the map.

This is the annual “OK Nuts” Trophy event organised by SLOW, my home club, with the planner and organiser both JOKers (i.e. from JOK, my second club.) So I had no excuse not to turn up. Plus it was inside the M25 and was London’s finest area that I had never been to – I think.

Also special about this event, and the reason why I again ran up on the M21L course, was that this years “special feature” (there always is one for OK Nuts ) was the inclusion of a “Micro-O” course.

(I’ll write more about the Micro-O in a seperate post.)

Esher is a large map, made up of several commons, bisected unfortunately by the A3 and another busy road, and some housing – otherwise it would be a very fine area indeed. Oxshott Heath is very technical, but a bit brambly, while Esher North, the MicroO area, also has some excellently technical areas. “West End” is faster and simpler, with a (very) steep slope down to Winterdown Wood for the finish. A nice mix and an enjoyable area, although not quite as unique as Epping Forest last week.

No. 1 was immediately into a technical area, full of pits, but was straightforward, as was 2, 3 (2-3 a plod along tracks), and 4. 5 was my first mistake, I got slightly disorientated in a maze of paths and brambles and spent a while searching in the wrong area for the control – a 1 minute error. 6, 7 and 8 were OK, 9 again was made more difficult by the brambles and maze of paths. 10 was my only really big error. A long leg, I somehow drifted to the east near the end and ended heading up 90 degrees in the wrong direction, and needed to double back. Maybe a 2 minute mistake here. 11 was a plod, 12, 13 and 14 were straightforward (and nice.) 15-19 were the MicroO controls, I’ll say more about them in another blog entry. 20 was another track plod but I was so “spaced out”/disorientated by MicroO and the map scale change I actually missed the great big track initially. Scary stuff. 21 was OK although I oddly exited this control nearly 180 degrees in the wrong direction (WTF?!). 22 was a dog-leg, 23 was good, 24 was nice too (I climbed up and stayed high.) 25 was a rather exciting plunge down a very steep bank. Some people hurled themselves off this like lemmings, but I climbed down carefully. 26 and 27 were on a trail, and then – the sting in the tail – 28 was a long, difficult leg with plenty of route choice. I was very tired by the point, and stayed low – too low, almost running off my map, as most other competitors had a “Sprint O” section here. But I got lucky, finding a path through some wet, green terrain.

Mistakes:
5: Poor map-reading.
10: Poor navigation/poor route-choice.
18: Hesitation.
28: Hesitation.

All in all, a pretty clear run – a world away from last Sunday’s race. Crucially, I didn’t run out of energy after 6km or so, but was able to maintain a good pace the whole way around. Maybe my much slower pace in the MicroO helped me a lot to recover for the final 3km. Conditions were good – still very cold, but clear, and most importantly dry underfoot. I did however twist my ankle twice (again – I twisted it twice last Sunday too) causing me to tread carefully for a couple of legs – 4 and 25. It’s slightly concerning that I keep doing this, as it’s bound to be putting a lot of stress on the ligaments.

My time was 80:36 for the 10.4km, 225m course. I thought that was a really good time initially, but Esher is really, really fast – I finished 52nd of 92 runners, my lack of mistakes in the MicroO gaining me three places, but my relative slowness in that section (I was 66th out of 92 in terms of time only for the MicroO) probably cost me another four…