This was probably the closest orienteering event to me, being based in central London. Hampstead Heath is known as the “green” lung of London and despite its location near the heart of the city, it easily large enough for a District event.
This being my first race of the season, and it being the morning after a late night before, I was planning to run down two classes. I spotted my club captain at the registration tent however and so hastily decided to run just one class down. Unfortuantely he heard me say this and insisted I ran in the top class. 8.4km on the back of no training (the “summer recess”) since Sweden in July. Aargh! I felt very out of fitness and indeed all but gave up half way around, having been part of a back of relatively fast runners, including the aforementioned captain, for several legs. However I perservered and got around in the end. The heath is huge and varied, with open parkland, lakes and dense woodland, with a maze of paths. A bit of a treat to be so nearby, and it can hold its own to many of the other London-centric areas nearby. At 210m, my course managed to pack a lot of climbing in for southern England.
My main mistake was at number 12, where I got confused by the patchwork terrain and myriad paths, the noise of the roads above and the uneven settlement around me. I dropped maybe 6-7 minutes here. 12 is in the extract at the bottom left, I approached along the road to the north of the settlement area, coming around to the right much too late, having curved around to the left too much and going into an intricate “hollow”, just to the south of the extract, too deep.
After my fast start and exhausting middle, it was a battle to get around before the course closed. I made it with seconds to spare in the end, having considerably upped my pace for the last 25%, so much so that I found the hill climb at the end a real killer, and my legs have badly stiffened up the following day. But the weather was fine and it was a nice start to hopefully a long and injury free season. Missing 10 mins/km by a matter of a few seconds was very annoying though.
Brown course, 8.4km, 210m climb, 84:42 (2/3rds down the field.)
The final day of the O-Ringen, and the second day bathed in glorous sunshine. Unfortuantely I had caught a bad cold the previous night, and was feeling pretty dreadful. I ended up just running the first couple of legs, then going for a nice wander and completing and the latter half of the course, the easier section, so that I could get a good feel of the course without aggrevating my cold. 
Day 4 was the sprint race – less than 4km in length, and rumours of the terrain being very different to the previous days’. The fact that the walk to the start from the assembly area (and finish) was over 3km left the JOKers wondering whether the course would be a straight line back to the finish. In fact, the walk to the start essentially went right around the competition area – three sides of a square.
The rest of the course was OK in general. No. 3 was wedged down a gully about 80cm wide – one way in and out, for most people, except me – I instead jumped directly on the control from the crag above, almost squashing several other runners in the process. I made another big mistake at number 9 (going from SW to NE on the other extract here. Here, it started to rain and I found it quite difficult to see. The control was considerably further to the east than I thought. The nature of a sprint race is that you have to just go for it, so I was running around madly every time I made a mistake – often making it worse.
Day 3, and the JOKers had the undeniable luxury of essentially staying at a club hut on the map. Considering that we were on the edge of the city though, we were all suprised at the ruggedness and remoteness of some sections of the map. The dominating features were distinct lines of crags, running directly north-south at around 500m intervals. The forest however was almost universally runnable and very fast, making this the most pleasing “conventional” map of the five days and my personal favourite day.
I only made one serious error on this course, at Control 14. I made a very bad route choice indeed on the leg from 13 to 14, deciding to go over rather than around a hill, but then at the highest point, deciding do “go around” after all and dropping down in the wrong direction. This exhausting climb probably caused the big error around the control. I was search just 50 metres too far to the west of the control, on as it turns out a parallel reentrant. Only the hefty cliffs further to the west stopped me from going even further away, and in fact provided a useful relocation feature.
After yesterday’s damp run, the weather was much sunnier today – and indeed I took most of my 
Leg 3 to 4 offered the most interesting route choice, being the longest leg and an out-of-bounds (OOB) section blocking the direct route. Glancing at the map, I planned to go in a roughly straight line, bearing left around the OOB – as this would involve the least running and the general rule in these forests is that it’s best to go straight. There are so few paths, and the undergrowth and “green” areas are so sparse, that the traditional British detour is not normally worth it. I ended up going both left and right around the OOB in the end, as I had a bit of a change of plan en route and turned 90 degrees. The normal rule I go by is once I’m committed, go for it. But the terrain was tricky and detailed, and an obvious road that I bizarrely hadn’t seen earlier, offered a tempting, but longer, route. I probably wasted 3-4 minutes having to backstep, but I’m glad I did as thereon the rest of the leg to 4 was fast and easy. The fourth control turned out to be perched in a crevice on a cliff-face, and I turned the wrong way on approaching it, but still this was one of my better controls and I caught up at least one of the other JOK-ers here.
Out of just 12 controls on the 7.33km course I managed to stuff up 5 controls, wasting over 5 minutes on four of them. A combination of parallel errors, unfamiliarity with the 1:15000 and sheer recklessness meant I took around 105 minutes to finish the course, well done on most others in JOK, the club I was running with (and a good group to compare with – after all, none of us – Nick Barrable excepted – were ever going to be able to compete with “the Scandies” on level terms.