Author: Oliver O'Brien

15th February at Swinley Forest, Bracknell (BKO) – The Concorde Chase.
This was off the back of a large hangover from the Valentines’ Night bop at Oxford. Fresh off the train, I was feeling a bit rough. The area was, despite being very flat, rather uninspirational, and dare I say it even, boring. Indeed, I really gave up bothering to get a good time in, about half way around. Although perhaps that’s just the alcohol speaking. Or the fact we were using the ungainly EMIT bricks for the electronic punching, rather than the de-facto standard, and more user-friendly SportIdent system. Oxford were out in force too though, so I had plenty of splits to compare with for my course. They also kindly gave me a lift back to Ascot – cheers guys!

My result: M21S (7.3km, 50m climb): 65:56. 9.0 mins/km. I really should have done better, but… I just didn’t care today.

The map extract shows one of the more interesting sections of the course – Control 12 was up a steep slope here. The area in general however was more tedious than it looked – very bleak, very military.

7th February at Wimbledon Common (JOK) – The Varsity Match 2004.
After last year’s triumph with the Oxford team, and a half blue later, this year I was running for the
ex-Oxford club, JOK. Despite Wimbledon being down the road from where I live, I still managed to start late. The area is very nice, with some attractive, remote sections in the middle, though with a rather scrappy northern section. The courses made good use of all Wimbledon Common has to offer. No Wombles spotted, but the common was clean so they must be doing their work.

My result: Men’s A (11.4km): 100:15. 8.8 mins/km, not too shabby I thought on the back of no exercise, but a bottom 20% result due to all the l33t Oxford runners about, and the fact that the course got dark for my final three controls.

The map extract above shows one of the more interesting (if green) parts of the course. I overshot quite badly coming to Control 3 – due to the intricate brown detail mixed in amongst the green – and also at Control 4 – this was a case of just climbing too high up the rather subtle slopes. The yellow area shown is part of a golf course, which we weren’t allowed one, hence the rather interesting shape.

I missed the relays due to mis-timing the distance to Waterloo… So the GS-JOK team ended up with one member doing the first and last legs. Sorry Alan!

28th December 2003 at Yellowcraigs (ELO) – The Festive Frolic.
I’ve probably orienteering at Yellowcraigs the most of any map – perhaps 10 times (The Frolic’s an annual event, always on this map, and I’ve been orienteering for very nearly a decade now.) This year the event was a one hour
score, but you had to solve a riddle for each control, then visit them in alphabetical order (you could have visited them all randomly and then re-run in the correct order, but this would have doubled the race length.) The clues were pretty hard, and I didn’t get further than “P” before running out of time. The best strategy in retrospect would have indeed been to visit all the controls in tight order, note down their letters and then re-run the course in race order – while it would have been the winning strategy it would also have been very tiring! Needless to say, a former club contemporary and British Team member, Murray Strain, would have won this event easily, but for a technicality. Indeed this is probably the only event ever where I finished further up the scoreboard than he did…

My result: 16 controls in 59 minutes. The results are here.

No map extract I’m afraid as I’ve left my map at the family home in Scotland…

Westerham Chart Regional Event (DFOK) on Sunday 7th December 2003
Last weekend I was at a district event near Westerham – a very attractive village in the
North Downs just south of London. Just south of Westerham is Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s country estate. A prominent statue of the leader lies on Westerham village green.

The orienteering itself ranged from the mediocre to the superb. I had a pretty slow race, this was because several times during the race I stopped to let people that were following me around, get ahead. There’s few things worse in an orienteering event than people following in your footsteps, while you do the thinking. Orienteering is, by design, a rather unsociable sport, and the best performances can happen when there’s no one else out on the course. Any
advantage gained by spotting competitors around control points is normally more than compensated by minutes wasted being distracted by people on other courses, running in all directions.

The map was in several sections, interrupted by various country lanes. The start and finish area was in a superbly technical section, with a melee of paths and vegetation changes guaranteed. It was a shame this area wasn’t used more for the longer courses. The middle section was running around (not through!) a hugely intimidating area of inpenetrable forest, or “dark green” in orienteering lingo. The extract below shows one such bit of green horror. This was followed by a fast but unmemorable section along flat, easy paths and clear forests, returning through an interesting, very physical section, sadly also underused, to the intricate section for the end.

In all, it was a slow performance by myself, mainly because I was trying to improve my technical skill (tough to do with others following) but also because of a nasty chest cold I’ve been suffering from a lot recently (no, parents, I’m not dying, just very unfit.) The weather was great for orienteering – very cold and frosty, but sunny.

My result: Brown, 7.7km – 75.02 (9.7 mins/km). The results page is here.

This weekend I’m taking a rest from orienteering, but I’m hoping to compete in a final event next Sunday in Southern England, before heading back up to Scotland for a Christmas break.

OO Trophy at Ambersham Common (GO), 30th November 2003
The doom and gloom and hail and rain, predicted by the weather forecasters, failed to materialise for today’s colour-coded (or “district” to use the new terminology) event near Midhurst in the South Downs.

There were several hundred competitors for the Occasional Orienteers trophy, named after a now defunct club. The terrain was wet underfoot, but reasonably easy physically and technically. I made just one significant mistake – switching off and losing contact with the map in the easiest part of the course of all, causing me to overshoot – not more than a minute was wasted though.

It was nice to finish in the top half of the results list and run under 9 mins/km, but of course that was because all the really good people were running a course up…

Official results are here.

The Mitre, Epping Forest East (CHIG) on XXth November 2003.
I’ve orienteered at Epping Forest several times before. This large, ancient hunting forest in the north-east of London has a reputation for being of the highest technical standard and I wasn’t disappointed last Sunday, when I competed at a CHIG event, the 2003 Mitre.

A half-hour tube journey from London to the parking location at Theydon Bois (a really lovely little village with a strong identity and a charming green) was followed by a 2km walk to the assembly – a bit of a pain but a necessity in this sort of area. Registering for the course was a bit confusing, but once out on the course itself, all pains were forgotten. The weather was ideal for orienteering in November – clear, sunny and dry. Compared with last week’s race at Aldershot, the area was flatter and more pleasant to run in, but much more technical. In fact, I got severely lost, not once but several times. In the worst incident, I ended up taking around 10 times as long between two points on the course as I should have…

This meant any hopes of getting a good result were dashed, but getting lost is preferable than to not getting around the course due to lack of fitness, as brushing up your technical skills is a lot less painful than working out at the gym every day.

Looking at the map, even the first leg proved confusing, as a myriad of small paths combined with the sheer beauty of the forest to slow me down. I made a classic pacing error at No. 4, a bearing mistake at No. 6, another pacing error and speed error at No. 9, the mother of all mistakes at No. 10, a bearing error at No. 12, an unmentionably embarrasing mistake at No. 16… the list goes on. At my level, I really shouldn’t be making any mistakes that cost me more than a minute, but for this race, each of the above cost me many times that.

Take a look at the extract here, the second half of the huge (> 1km) leg between 8 and 9. This is absolutely superb technical terrain – really flat and pleasant, quite open, but with subtle changing forest thickness and tiny earth features – no “handlebars” in sight bar a run up to the road. I took a very long time to get to 9, coming too cautiously up the shallow valley and being confused by the first line of depressions. For some, unfathomable reason, coming out of 9, I headed north, got confused, ran east, got misled by other runners (always fatal) and eventually – after nearly 10 minutes – ended up at… No. 11?! Even then on running back, I wasn’t sure if I had missed 10, or in fact missed 9 instead. And that is how I took 11 minutes to run a 100m leg. At one moment I was completely and totally lost and about to relocate. But this is the sort of terrain that I wish every map around here was made of, because then us Brits might have a lead on the invincible Scandanvians (who have this terrain for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.)

The event was marred by quite a few equipment failures and as such the results analysis is still not posted to the web. I can’t wait for it to be – my speed graph should prove very telling – I’ll post an update to this story when it appears.

Tomorrow I’m doing more orienteering – this time down near Balcombe in the South Downs.

SN Trophy, Long Valley South
I competed in my first orienteering event of the season this morning: the Southern Navigators Trophy at Long Valley South, a typical forest-and-heathland military area just west of Aldershot. I entered the M21S course (8.34km, 260m) – I should really be running Long but this was my first race, in fact my first real exercise, since the French 5-days in July. (I’ve joined the company gym, but am yet to get around to going!)

The area was quite tough physically, and middling technically, and the rain later on didn’t help, but overall it was a good area and an ideal way start regaining my general fitness.

I was running for SLOW (South London) for the first time, and also introduced a friend (Rob) to the sport. Rob ran a spirited race, with some respectable splits for a first timer on a pretty technical and physical area, before bailing near the end.

I had a great run, considering my total lack of fitness, finishing in just under 10 mins/km, a nice surprise (although I should be on around 8 mins/km at full fitness.) I didn’t make any major foul-ups (or “tools” as OUOC traditionally calls them) but I did feel very tired a third of the away around the course – the section around here is shown in the extract above and was quite physical. Later, the open heathland proved very fast and I felt I had more energy near the end. The extract to the right shows a leg I found a bit tricky, there was more green here than shown (true for some other areas on the map too) but the artificial ditch network proved useful.

The results graphs and are online and show a couple of things for me and Rob (select M21S from the class pop-down adn then select the winner, me and Rob, to see) – firstly my detour at 6 to find water – I was quite ill – slowed down an otherwise consistently good race, and also that Rob dramatically changed gear after number 4. The SportIdent results graphing is always great for post-race analysis!

Next race, on Sunday, is the Mitre at Epping Forest, which should be an easier competition – I’m more suited to the gently rolling terrain and broadly deciduous forest there. Cambridge Uni are going to be there, running the same course in force, they should prove interesting competition as always.