Category: Orienteering Events Log

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…

A new (for me) area in the always lovely Epping Forest, and the start right beside a London Underground station meaning I could get a lie in and do a morning race. The weather was crisp and sunny, but incredibly cold, with some frost on the ground – ideal for orienteering as long as you run fast so as not to freeze.

After spying a bunch of people I know from OUOC running M21L, I decided to “run up” to that course too. The 10.8km course was 50% longer to what I’m used to at the moment, and it showed in my times. In the graph below, my race was the green line, and I kept pretty much level with Ian and Huzzah (Pete) for the first half of the course. A succession of three mistakes at 13, 14 and 15 left me exhausted and I was never really able to maintain the earlier pace after that.

The first part of the course took the M21L runners (only!) into a large, “green” area that was tough to navigate through. Leg 1 was long and, if you weren’t used to the green, tiring. A failed attempt at cutting off a path corner by attempting to go through a green patch meant that I had a slow time to No. 2. The next few were straightforward, but long runs on paths, before the race become more technical. After all the green, I decided to around the path from 6 to 7, rather than through a weak ride – even though my route was 30% longer. No. 7 was technical and I became confused in the maze of paths. No. 8 was in a very vague patch of woods, but 9-12 were fine. 12-13 was long, and I stupidly decided to head north to a path, instead of direct through the very easy woods. I changed my mind before hitting the path, but crosse a stream above a fork, thinking I had crossed below – so miscounted my streams on this leg and spent ages one stream to early, wondering why everyone else was running past without stopping. A real nightmare. And No. 14 was a bingo control in low visibility woodland. If your compass-work wasn’t spot on, you missed it – which I did. But this is what orienteering is all about. I always make big mistakes on Epping Forest maps, and this was no exception – but that’s why I like the area so much (plus the fact it is flat.)

I also messed up No. 15, arriving at 16 before it. 16 was a dead control – I bet I got the fastest split to it as I had been to it before but we’ll never know ;-). 17-22 were OK, but I was really starting to slow my normal pace here, as the course length started to take its toll. I got lucky on 21 though – a (real) minefield but I struck the control straight on, purely by luck. 22-23 I was really tired now, and took a lazy (and long) route around on paths, whereas most sensible people went straight, on easy gorun. 24-25 was similar to 6-7, and this time I did take the plunge through the green – it wasn’t too bad at all, although I was losing concentration by this point and messed up 25 (a technical one) by being distracted by anthoer control. 26 was OK (an old bomb site, apparently) but even on the last control – 27 – I overshot, again being distracted by another control. I normally assume/hope the last few controls in a race are easy, but there was no let up here.

All in all, a very technical race, after a physical start, Epping once again managing to fool and disorientate me.

A real litany of mistakes:
No. 2: Poor route choice/poor navigation/impassible terrain.
No. 7: Poor route choice/poor navigation.
No. 8: Poor mapping.
No. 13: Poor map-reading.
No. 14: Poor navigation/bingo control.
No. 15: Poor navigation.
No. 23: Exhaustion.
No. 25: Fatigue.
No. 27: Poor map-reading/fatigue.

I need to get better if I’m going to stay running long.

My time, for the 10.8km/145m climb M21L course was 94:35. Today was a Long course, last Sunday was a Short, but very different areas. I actually finished today’s course in less time than yesterday’s, and also beat 9 mpk which is always nice. But I was 18th out of 24 runners, with most runners just ahead of me. If I had only had a bit more energy…

M21L Point-by-point analysis on Splitsbrowser. Green: Me. Yellow and Red: Ian and Huzzah.

After not that many hours of sleep on a Real Working Farm(tm) on the Saturday night – after the JOK AGM, we were up bright and early on a piercing cold day for the National Race (and VHI Individuals) on the Sunday. The temperature gauge was barely above zero at the Assembly area, but it was clear and sunny.

It was a tough race, no doubt about that. My 6.7km M21S felt longer than most M21L long races I’ve run, and this was without doubt the toughest race I’ve run for a couple of years – and that include the Trossachs. It was relentlessly physical, the switchback course went from one tough area of forest to another. It was suprisingly technical too and I made several large errors – one at the second control was may be due to poor mapping in the area, or perhaps my pace being too fast (I got the fastest time to the first control.) One just after the fifth was due to the distractions of large numbers of competitors arriving at a control from the same direction. I made a silly blunder and headed up a path at 90 degrees to where I wanted to go – and had to backtrack due to the steep terrain. Immediately after, I confused a shallow rise for a shallow dip in the contours and so spent a good while thrashing around in “green” forest, wondering why what I thought was “white” forest was so tough. This was on my approach to 6 – see the map extract here. A further error coming to 9 meant I ended up in the wrong section of open, and had to my first “formal” relocation for a few months, up to the track to the north of no. 9, before trying three times to come back in to the open. The forest was tough out there. I absolutely loved 9-10 though – this big leg had it all – physical, technical, lots of key decisions to be made about where to aim for and how much climbing needed to be done. Needless to say I messed this one up too, stopping too short and too high, but I loved the technical challenge here – see extract below. Some legs were simple and designed as a “tourist guide to the area” – see 4-5 in the extract above, which was a long a path weaving through monkey-puzzle trees – very pleasant.

After the problems in the first half of the course, I knew I wasn’t going to be getting a good time, so set out to enjoy the rest of the course. A visit to a control immediately below the spectacular “Kyloe in the Woods” cliff was dramatic, as was a control in a depression in a sudden small area of deep, dark and positively spooky piece of wood, before emerging back out into the sunlight. Just like a scene out of Harry Potter. There were many legs where if you didn’t look ahead and plan the whole leg, you would end up the wrong side of a cliff. And some legs where you either had to plunge through a “green” area, or spend twice as long going around – great route choice decisions to be made.

Mistake summary:
2: Navigational error/distraction/poor mapping
6: Navigational error/distraction (leaving 5)
6: Inverted contours
8: Poor mapping
9: Navigational error/map reading error [relocation]
10: Hesitation/map reading error
17: Navigational error

I loved this race and its relentless test of physical AND technical skills, without imposing huge amounts of plodding up hills as many physical courses do. It was physical and technical without a rest, all the way to the end. But next time I come here, I’m going to do a serious amount of training first though. My time – 94:51 for 6.7km, 220 climb, was pretty awful, the winner took 60:52. Not counting the numerous large mistakes I made (I’ve recorded 7 for Attackpoint) I would estimate my time would have been about 75 minutes.

A possible candidate for my Top 10 maps of the UK, although the I suspect the planning, rather than the area, was the key.

I got an early morning train up to Berwick-upon-Tweed on Saturday, for a middle distance race in the afternoon (the Veteran Home International Relays were in the morning) at Greensheen & Cockenheugh – just south of the Kyloe Hills. The race just happened to be the JOK Club Championships 2005 too, my handicap for this year was 12 minutes (the time subtracted from my real time to calculate my handicap position.) It was an adventure just getting to the car park, and on stepping out of the car, my dad (my parents were down for the day) declined the offer of a run. Once out on the hill, it wasn’t too bad though – first a straightfoward section in fast forest, followed by a very linear but interesting section across a steep hill filled with giant, interesting looking boulders. I then passed by St Cuthbert’s Cave (see the map extract here) somehow missing a large track to the south and wasting a few minutes bearing right, up the hill, almost going to No. 14 before my intended control No. 9. Coutour creep is a standard orienteering mistake but normally one ends up too low, not too high… As this was a middle distance race, these few minutes cost me a valuable number of places. The second half was on steep moorland, which wasn’t too bad, although the biting cold wind started to be felt again.

All in all a nice little area. The options available to the planner are somewhat limited due to the area’s size and safety concerns with teh clifs and boulders, but I enjoyed it, and had a good run overall considering this was my first serious run for five weeks.

I took 50:24 for the 5.3km course with 130m of climbing. I think I lost 90 seconds each at Nos. 2 and 5, and 4 minutes with my bad route choice/deviation at No. 9, so my mistakeless time would have been around 43 minutes.

Mistake summary:
2: Navigational error
5: Poor mapping
9: Navigational error/map reading error

After the event the tide was just going out so my parents and I headed across the causeway to Lindesfarne to catch the sun going down through the ruins of the Priory, and the grant castle on the point on the island. It was all rather nice. I vaguely remember when I was last there – about 15 years ago.

This was an interesting area – true “inner city” woodland, with several burnt out cars, wrecked motorbikes and event a burnt-out van at various points on the course. The area itself was suprisingly hilly too – 260m for a 5.9km course in SE England is pretty impressive – more so as this is inner city London. There is indeed an abbey in the woods too – just some ruined walls now, but a nice spot, surrounded by concrete housing estates…

My biggest mistake was on the approach to No. 8 – I dropped down an unmarked path above the control, a little early, and after thrashing around in the dark green, had to drop down, then around, then back up. But 8 to 9 was a superb leg, lovely and fast.

To sum up the area, there were some really nice pockets – one lovely section with no undergrowth and large trees was the very nicest of forest; but also too much green, and too many roads slicing up the area, to give a great run. But it was an unexpected challenge and quite unlike any other London park I’ve run in so far…

One look at the climbs on the course and I switched from Brown to Blue – I did the 5.9km/260m course in 53:13 (9.0 mins/km.) I finished a pleasing 4th out of 30 runners – the winner took 50:51.

The forest is very nice to run in – a 1000 year old forest with very wide rides seperating pockets of varying runnability and visibility. Although some sections were rather “scraggly” and unpleasant, there were some great sections, especially near the end, with grand old trees and little vegetation for late summer.

Ran the M21S course, came 4th out of 8 runners/7 finishers. Time was 63:09 for the 6.92km course with no significant climb – 9.1mpk pace. Winner took 48:15. I had one very bad (9 minute) mistake coming into 14 – which was in thick, low visibility forest from which I had to relocate twice, compounded by then leaving the control 180 degrees in the wrong direction…

After not being able to make it to last weekend’s Petersfield event due to a lack of trains running, this was my first event of the season. Having had a series of good M21S runs at the Scottish 6 day, I was tempted to pick a similar length of course, but as (a) this is Essex and (b) I should be capable of running more than 6km, I went for the Brown course – 9.3km with 120m of climb. The area was pretty flat, the middle part of the course was at on the same Thorndon North map that was my final race last season, and the running was fast and easy – very different to Scotland.

After a slow start (copying 22 controls down onto two maps) I made a mistake at the second control – a technical one, one of the few on the race, by misjudging distances on the map – only a 1 minute mistake though. 3-7 were simple – 4-7 in particular were real cross-country runner’s legs and not interesting at all. After entering the second map after number 8, I encountered a load of horseriders on the tracks – a bit of a hazard as you had to stop really for them to pass. I managed to come across the same pair of horses/riders about four times, going from control to control. The condition of Thorndon North was not too bad, considering it was September, but it was still a good idea to avoid any rough patches due to all the vegetation. I made a silly mistake at 12, again not judging the distance and not checking the compass, I beared 90 off about 100m before the control – wasting around 2 minutes. For No. 13 I was being very lazy and entered the immediate area around the control very slowly, wasting another minute. The forest was actually pretty dark here – for a white area – mainly due to the very grey skies that were keeping the Aussies away from the cricket too. 14-15 was rather pleasant, and here I caught up another Brown course runner, he was just slower than me but it was difficult to overtake him as I tried to go “alternative” routes to lose him, that nevertheless wasted a few seconds. After getting delayed by horses (again!) I fainlly caught up when he made a mistake at 19, and after that the only thing remaining was… an uphill finish! I hate uphill finishes, planner, what were you thinking! Anyway, it was a nice run around and the fact that the technical legs on a not very technical area, showed how out of fitness I was after six weeks off. And the following day (and today!) my legs really ached from the run – for only 9.3km, I have lost a lot of fitness.

Result (9.3km/120m climb):

Winner: 65:32 (7.0 mins/km)
Me: 73:34 (7.9 mins/km)
Position: 9th out of 21 runners, 20 finishers.

Next Sunday I am hoping to make it to the first regional event of the season for me, at Hatfield Forest, just north of London. Always nice living in central London – it’s dead easy to get anywhere from here.

Day 6, Glen Dye

I had run on here before, many years back, but the only thing I remember of it was that I didn’t enjoy it.

It must have been a different part of the map, or maybe the pleasant weather made a difference, but I really enjoyed the area, it was lovely and technical, but no big hills (apart from the one we started on top of) made it the day with the least amount of climbing – always a good thing. It was all gloriously runnable, and I had another good race – convieniently, the fourth out of six – with four days to count. The course had 21 controls – a crazy number considering the course was only 5.9km long. That meant a control every 300 metres on average! My worst mistake was the very first control – highly embarrasing considering it was a dead easy leg. I’ve never been great at first controls – witness Day 2 – but this one was only 100m from the start! Maybe the start kite was slightly off – it has always confused me why the start kite is not on the start line. Maybe I was just trying to hard to get a good run. In fact, it was another runner than pulled me down the slope too far to the left, or maybe it was my dodgy, cheap Type 7 compass. I don’t know… but it only cost me 60 seconds.

The rest of the course, up to 19, was easy going. 6, 7, 8 and 9 were all very technical, and I know other JOKers made mistakes here. 8-9 was an odd route. I’d just caught up with Tim, saw him make a mistake at 8 and so put on some extra speed to make clear water. I didn’t go around the path – the obvious route, but instead dropped into the marsh and along. I didn’t mind getting wet – it was the last day – but it was heavy going through the ferns and marsh. 9-10 was nice – I was completely alone here for some reason, but I thought I had done a good route so I don’t know why. Similarly, 10-11, the longest leg, was a lovely, pleasant run through hidden glades, straight to it, with every feature marked on the map, and used by myself to aim off.

14-15 had quite a chasm on it and it was tough to get across the river dry-shod. By now I should have been accelerating, but the other extract, below, shows why not – a very technical area, full of little hills and depressions, controls and confused orienteers. 16 was fine, 17 was also OK – some random Yorkshireman asked me at this point where he was, to which I pointed vaguely in the region of 17 and said “Somewhere here.” “Yes, I know that, but where here?” he said, but I had sped off. He wasn’t a little kid – so he should relocate himself and waste his own time. I guess he must have pissed me off, because I made my only other mistake at 19 – misreading the description for 18 as 19, I search in a thicket, on the edge of a small cliff, not for the depression 50m to the south where the control was. 20 was a bit mean – no one likes an uphill finish, but putting the penultimate control in a 10 metre pit was a bit much! And then it was on the the finish, the end of another six days and time for a nice lie down.

The Campsite

Special mention must be made of the campsite, in the grounds of lovely Crathes Castle. The first night was enlivened by a Status Quo concert. Some paid £30 to go along, but everyone heard the music, even from the campsite 500m away. Us non-paying cheapskates went along anyway to the barrier and could even see the stage from there so it was good enough. Shame about the music though.

We were in the “Youth” campsite, which was largely deserted as I guess everyone else wanted their sleep. But it wasn’t too bad actually – the main noise was a generator for the concert for the first two nights, rather than other campers. I didn’t have to cook myself – thanks to 3 BBQs (thanks Tim, ELO and JOK), 2 restaurant meals, 1 palming a pasta meal off Tim, and 1 Wilf’s takeaway – and it was great having a large marquee for social events every night, weather it was playing cards and drinking cheap beer from the bar, a quiz night, or a ceildh night. Oh, there was a “youth” disco – we stayed clear of that one! But having a marquee was definitely a good idea, and something I hope that future 6-Day organisers have. Even if future events are nearer normal forms of entertainment, having a marquee would still make a big difference.

All in all a great six days – the best one I’ve been to, beating Breadalbane 97, Highland 99 and Lochaber 2001. The forests were great, it wasn’t too hot, I was on form (suprisingly) and going with the JOKers meant for interesting evenings too. Nice to get away from the city, and rough it a bit camping. I definitely was getting used to campsite/orienteering life and genuinely felt bad when the week finished. Bring on Speyside 2007.

Day 4, Allt Cailleach

This was part of the Royal Balmoral Estate, and the M21S course first involved a monster 4.1km walk (!) to the start. It was easy to see why this was necessary though, after studying the map, due to the shape and location of the most technical parts. As I was running the short course, the course route basically went in a straight-ish line right back to the start. Today was the day however that I made the most number of mistakes – most of these, apart from one, were small, but most also were stupid mistakes (what was I thinking?! type mistakes) rather than “worthy” ones.

I actually arrived to the start, after a 50 minute walk, with about 10 seconds to spare, so for once, there was no time to warm up. This was a shame, because the first leg (as you can see from the above extract) was a real killer – pick up your map, turn left and climb 60 metres vertical in just 150 metres horizontal. Needless to say, I walked this, as did most people. Leg 2 was OK – I was a little slow, there was an Italian guy just below me being distracting. Leg 3 was interesting – I went straight up the cliff, overshot slightly but kind of knew I’d done this so didn’t waste any time above the cliffs. The control was in a delightful location above the main forest. Other people I talked to instead went left, bypassing the cliffs. There doesn’t seem to have been much advantaged either way.

Nearly everyone except me seems to have spent a very long time finding 4. I was lucky as I just followed the veg boundary around and basically ran onto the control, actually expecting it to be 100m further away (so – very lucky!) Five was just down a hill – again fine here for me but others made mistakes. My first big mistake of the Day was number 6 – an easy control, but in ankle-breaking marshy terrain. A similar knoll just north caused me to pause an mistakenly double back, wasting 2 minutes in the end. 7 was fine – a long leg, some went around but I think straight was OK too. An out of bounds section confused some – but I was OK – to 8. 9 was my second mistake, I stopped short of the control for too long – wasting 1 minute. Realisation of my mistake distracted me and I made a really stupid one to 10 – I went off wrong, but then decided to ignore a direct, straight path to the control and double back, trying to get back on my originally intended route, and getting stuck in deep grass, wasting another 2.

11, 12 were fine, although the line of “plodders” to 12 really annoyed me. All longer courses were forced along this narrow strip due to course constraints, but it was very annoying having plodders blocking the way. Yes, I know orienteering is suppoosed to be inclusive and all, but why bother entering a competitive event, if you are just going to walk the whole way around? Why not just go hillwalking or rambing or something! This again annoyed me, and I therefore immediately made my biggest mistake of all, to control 13, the one that allowed Tony (who had started 4 minutes behind me) to catch up and stay with me for the remainder fo the course. I took a lazy route onto the spur, which meant I wasn’t sure how far along the spur I was. I hesitated, then went away from another control, which was (and I don’t think this is in the spirit of the competition) placed only a few metres away from the control I was looking for. I had to do a formal relocation off a track lower down, and come back into the control, number 13. Five minutes wasted here. 14 was only 150m further away but I still wasted one more minute here, by overshooting the control, missing it by 2 metres up (it was hidden below a bank) and then having to come back. 15, 16 and 17 were simple enough although 15-16 was treacherous underfoot. All in all, not a great run, peppered by lots of small mistakes, and this proved to be my second non-counting day.

Day 5, Bogendreip

I haven’t had a fautless run for years, but here, finally, it was. I had been dreading this area – it was right beside Glen Dye, the only area I had been on before the six days – and I vaguely remember a physically tough, very marshy area. It was not to be – the course led up well around a marsh, then gradually up a hill – just gradual enough for me to run it – a lot of other people walked it which made a difference I think. It was an area of quite dense forest and not many ground features, such that if you made a mistake, it would take a long time to relocate. So I’m thankful I didn’t! The extract shows the nicest part of my course, as we come down into a pleasant wooded glade. The short leg shown was one of my best splits of the six days. The course then went steeply up hill to another “bingo” control that I thankfully spiked, before hurtling down straight-forwardly to the finish. By the time I got to the high bit, I knew I was on course for a great run, so I put on even more speed, so much so that I didn’t have enough energy for a traditional sprint finish. A good thing perhaps as the finish route led along a busy road and down a steep bank.

My best day of the six days – equal best speed with Day 3, and best on points. Day 3 I felt was my best run though – I was lucky here.