Author: Oliver O'Brien

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.

Here’s an analysis of two particular sections of the maps used during the French 5-days event in early July. Click on the map fragments to see an enlarged copy.

The first is on the fourth day – where upon starting the race I realised it was 3km shorter than it was supposed to be. My feet were in too much pain for me to pick up the pace though and consequently I had a very easy and trouble-free race indeed, until, in earshot of the finish, I switched off my ‘orienteering brain,’ went on to autopilot and immediately made the most embarrassing mistake of the whole week.

After a very easy 11-12-13-14 with loads of people making control-spotting a cinch, I started to head towards 15. The hill ahead was low, but I planned to swing right and then contour around it, eventually hitting the straight path
and two more paths while running east and then going straight on to Control 15. As you can see, I forgot to bear to the left when contouring around, and instead, hit another set of paths, which I thought were the first. It was only when I could actually see the finish (double circle just after 17) I realised something was amiss, and had to swing back. This mistake probably cost me 120 seconds – significant in this ‘sprint’ race and sufficient for me to drop more than 10 places on the leaderboard.

This next one was on the final day of the competition – a hard, physical course in sweltering temperatures, with long open sections. Leg 5-6 was long (almost 2km – the blue vertical lines are 500m apart) and, after a tough,
epic-Sahara-crossing run down a wide surfaced track, with no protection from the tree plantation on either side (dark green on the map,) it offered a multitude of route choices for the exhausted but discerning competitor – left,
slightly left, over the hill, or to the right (Left, right are in terms of the runner, so looking at the map, the runner’s left is a right here.) I chose to go over the hill, as you can see from my red route line. Bad mistake. It was direct, but the hill was bigger than I thought (contours are at 2.5m interval) and I quickly tired in the heat of the open hillside. Worse, the path was very sandy – two steps up meant one down again. Notice the wobble just before
summitting the hill, this was where I realised my route choice mistake, tried to come off the path to contour around the hill, and ran straight into heavy felled rough open – a no go without longer legs. So the question is, what was the best route choice of all? Rob P went slightly left, over some rough fell, but I know most went right. Normally the most direct way is the fastest way – in this instance this was not true. Making good route choice decisions on the fly and ‘live updating’ your route plans is a crucial skill to have when orienteering at a non-novice level and it’s one that I’m still learning.

6-7 was a cinch for me, it was doubly satisfying to note several competitors hitting the spur too early, and turning back down the hill in a fruitless search. 7-8 of my route looks very indirect, but I wanted to avoid thick
vegetation (green dots on green) at all costs after Day 1’s mare. Another Oxford orienteer got trapped in the vegetation immediately on exiting 7, and got so tired he forgot to go to 8, and went to 9 instead – a complete disaster racewise from his point of view.

I’m back! After a highly enjoyable week in south west France, at the biennual ‘5-Jour de France’ festival of orienteering, on this year’s Oxford Uni OC club tour.

I didn’t do particularly well at the event, much to do with my poor level of fitness as to the exceptional heat (up to 35 degrees celsius on the last day!) but it was a great experience, with the sandy forests proving to have a distinctive style.

I’m hoping to write a couple of more technical articles in the next couple of days analysing particular legs of courses (with map extracts.) And hopefully some of the many photos I took will be online in due course too. For now, here’s a summary of the week:

Sunday – after crashing on Martin’s floor in North Oxford, with my mum taking away four years of junk accumulated in college, I jumped on the last bus to Stansted and flew with the 10 or so other OUOC orienteers and some JOKers (the alumni club) to Biarritz. There were superb views of the huge forest in the Landes region that we would be in, from the plane – unfortuantly I ended up deleting all these pics… After hiring cars at Biarritz we headed to the campsite, a simple but pleasant one set in attractive pine woodland, a couple of hours north at Lit et Mixe. 15 tents, and one hammock, were pitched in a rough circle. We received our exclusive tour kit – the tricolor design would later on manage to confuse some competitors into thinking we were the French national team…

Monday – Etage 1. This was only a few minutes from the campsite, although a 2km along the “car park” road in a sweltering, dusty atmosphere was a taste of things to come. I was running H21A despite having done little recent
orienteering, and how I paid for it on the first day. A silly route choice, five minutes into the race, led me to get trapped in three metre high bracken and gorse. I reached up to wipe the sweat off my forehead, only to see my
hands covered in blood – a nasty gash to the head and I was leaking claret all over the place. Panicking slightly, I eventually escaped and then wandered all over the place, dazed, trying to find the control – wasting 45 minutes in the process and exhausting myself for the latter stages of the race. There was another serious mistake later on caused by exhaustion, and I found myself running from drinks point to drinks point, via as many trees as possible.
Eventually I slunk in nearly three hours after I had started, finishing 158th out of 159 finishers (there were a lot of retirals) – and I really feel sorry for the guy I beat! It was by far my worst ever result. After showers, we transferred to the local beach – Plage de l’Homy – to do some serious sun bathing. I had naively forgotten trunks and flip flops, so avoided a much needed dip in the Atlantic. Despite downing several litres of water I still dehydrated and got a headache. The evening finished up with a hearty pasta meal bought in a somewhat surreal supermarché (entirely surrounded by a forest – like most things in Landes) and cooked at the campsite.

Tuesday – Etage 2. This was in the same area, with a different start. The weather was once again hot, with blue skies all around. This was my latest start (12.35) and after yesterday’s nightmare I was playing it very defensively indeed, forcing myself to go slow and keep welll away from any ground vegetation. In the event, I had a much better run, having learnt a lot of tactics from the previous day – drink absolutely loads before and after the
race, avoid paths as you just slip on the sand, plan your route to use drinks points sensibly, and be cautious. I finished 139th out of 168 finishers, and missed out on my 100 minute target by 40 seconds – by foolishly switching off just before the end and heading for an incorrect flag 200m south of where I should have been. Everyone was too hot and tired so we went straight to the beach – I had by now purloined trunks so was able to do a bit of swimming and wave-dodging/breaking in the ocean, which was great fun – it’s an excellent beach. Then it was back to the campsite for a well earned rest.

(The picture, by the way, is of Pippa (OUOC) and Tim (JOKer) posing with our hired surfboard at the beach on Day 4.)

The third day was the earliest start for myself and my compatriots. Each club member is allocated roughly similar start times each day – Oxford’s for Day 2 were around midday, but for today, we had 8am starts! Incredible as it may seem, we were actually delighted about this – OK, the early start meant the previous evening’s trip to the wine bar had to be shorter than normal, but running at 8am was so much more pleasant temperature rise. The day also started quite cloudly, and really, it was the most pleasant of all the days. I improved again on my previous day’s result, and in fact this was my best day position-wise. My run was virtually error free, with only the long run to the beach finish proving to be morale-sapping.