Category: Orienteering Events Log

Day 1, Cambus O’May

I was helping out on this day, so I spent a couple of hours in the download tent, giving the splits and the good (or bad) news to runners coming in. This proved quite useful, as I noticed the times coming in for my course (M21S) were definitely on the long side considering the course was just 5km. This meant that later on, when I got my run in, I started off the first leg – which proved to be a very technical leg – very slowly. I spiked 1 and 2, beared off a little too far right to number 3, and spiked 4, 5 and 6 (although running down the edge of the map was disconcerting and confusing, causing me to slow right down. Number 7 was my big mistake. I did the first 95% of the course perfectly, then managed to get distracted by other runners and controls, and ended up too far left (i.e. south) around the control site. I almost did a formal relocation here, but worked it out after a few minutes of dithering. This was, however, my third worst mistake of the 6 days, and cost me 4 minutes.

Just back from the Scottish 6 Days – I had a great time and did better than expected. Full writeup, photos, and day-by-day accounts and extracts to follow shortly! See here for results.

Well done to Pippa W for coming 3rd in the Women’s Elite race!

My final “regular” race this season, and a warmup for the Scottish 6-Day International Festival of Orienteering. Normally in late July, most forests would be consumed with undergrowth, however Thorndon North, a large forested country park just south of Brentwood in Essex, was in fine condition, with a maze of paths in the northern section providing a real challenge, and a pleasing range of terrain to provide a slight mental and physical test. And my technical skills that were just as rusty as my physical ones – my worst mistakes were at the first and the last controls – a hesitation due to mispacing at the first meant I remained too far up a bank and not far enough around. The last control was marred by distractions of walkers, a bearing error and some ambiguity in the mapping. This was my most serious mistake and I wasted 4-5 minutes here.

My time: 61:50 for a 6.39km Blue course with 90m of climb. The winner took 45:17.

Wow, I never knew Slough had it in it, but this is an excellent area, both for orienteering and as a general place to walk around in and enjoy. Black Park Country Park is bordered by the Pinewood Studios and as such has been the backdrop for numerous films and TV series – the most recent being Henry VIII (or so I’m told.)

This was my first race after I suffered a slight mishap on my bike – damaging my little finger. However it was the antibiotic that really knocked me out, leaving me seriously week and unable to bike, let along run, for several weeks. So, I wasn’t expecting a great time at Black Park. It was also pretty warm – never ideal for me.

Once again, my three-week spell off affected my race both physically and technically. Black Park is actually physically extremely easy, being both flat and with little serious undergrowth – a real treat for southern England in June! Add to that a complex and confusing path network and you have the makings of a great race.

My time – 84:34 for the 8.7km Brown course (compared with 53:22 for the winner) was disappointing, even in my weak state, mainly because I made two really bad technical mistakes. Ending up 24th out of 35th completers (+3 non-finishers) I made a serious error near No. 1 (a very technical approach and I hadn’t mentally “warmed up”) and near No. 16 (a real bingo control though and poor mapping.) The combination of these two mistakes wasted me 10-12 minutes. Still, there were some great legs on this course, a pleasure to run on, and a real gem of summer running.

After my shambles at the World Cup spectator races, I needed to redeem myself, and so made the journey, after work on a Wednesday evening, out to Romford and this local event. I do like summer local events, the pressure is off, it’s often warm and sunny and the maps are very different to those used in the high-power spring events.

This was a score event with a twist – you had one hour, during which you had to do 11 controls in any order, come back and copy down (and then get) up to 11 more. I managed to get a pleasing 18 (out of 22) controls, finishing under the whole and so escaping a time penalty. I was delighted to learn that I came second out of 23 runners – I got the same number of controls as the winner, but we was back just faster than I was – the tie break. The winner got 180 points in 55:48, I got 180 in 57:03. And this was despite a large blunder I made early on, and also a couple minutes of confusion after a control code didn’t match what I expected.

The only down-side, apart from some serious vegetation in some sections (inevitable for late May in southern England) was that it took me two hours to get there, and two hours to get back – mainly as I had to walk in to the event – no bikes allowed on trains during the commuter rush-hour!

Note my mistake on the extract – I had planned to run from controls 5 to 7, not realising that the fence is surrounded by an uncrossable fence around the deer park. I had to do some on-the-fly route replanning there. My main mistake was approaching control 4 from the north-east – I somehow ended up at control 18 (although I didn’t know it at the time.)

The atmosphere for this event was great, with the World Cup Long Distance race in the morning and the spectator race in the afternoon. There was a real international feel about the event, and the location was superb, the assembly area in a field high up in the Surrey hills, the weather warm and sunny.

Shame I had such a disasterous race really, finishing almost last. This was largely due to me not doing any training, or attending any events, for the previous six weeks – and unwisely choosing to run M21L (long) , having been running M21S (short) for the rest of the season thus far. I had a reasonable run for the first 2/3rds of the course, and would have posted a reasonably respectable time had I kept going at that base all the way, however I massively ran out of energy at around control 16, and ended up walking a large part of the remaining two kilometres, so ending up clocking over 2 hours out on the 12.9km course with 505m of climbing. (In the end, my time was an appalling 142:02, finishing 61st out of 63 finishers, plus 5 mps and one nc runner. The winner took 74:00.)

Mind you, even before I ran out of energy, I had not had an A1 run. Yes, it’s easier to lose physical fitness than “mental awareness” of orienteering, but I still made several stupid and tiring mistakes that I can only blame on having not orienteered in the previous weeks. For example, going from 2 to 3, I stopped at the drinks point, and then hurted down the hill, only to realise at the bottom that I had completely forgotten about control 3 and had been running to control 4. I had run all the way back up the hill… Also in leg 11-12, shown in the extract here, I (and several of my contempories, I should add) plunged down into the ravine and then crawled up the steep hill to 12. What I should have done of course was to go round to the left and stay high – distance wise it was longer, but it would have avoided the exhausting climb completely. I never really recovered from the climb to 12, and I think this triggered my gradual deteriation later in the course.

The graph shows my control-by-control performance compared with the 3 people who finished just in front of me. I’m the tan line – the red line for the latter part of the race shows how I would normally have run – the uptick at the end as I tradtionally finish strongly compared with my contempories. See how my speed just tanks after control 16, allowing the three to overtake.

Oh well, there was always the next event to look forward to two days later…

I’ve already touched on the Varsity Match, but I missed out including extracts of the maps, so here they are:

Individual Event
Saturday 19th March, Ängsjö, Järfälla.
This was a fast map, even in the snow, with intricate sections balanced with fast, straightforward ones. The best part of the map, shown here, was visited twice by both courses. Although tracks made by earlier runners certainly helped, it was easy to miss the marked paths as these were covered in snow. As usual, though, the high quality and pretty much faultless cartography meant every contour could be trusted 100%, which made things easier. Note that the contour interval is 4m, but there are a lot of form lines (aka intermediate contours) in some sections – many more than would normally be on a UK map. Anyway, I enjoyed this course and found it easier going than the last time I was on a VM course in Sweden – back in 2002.

Relay Event
Sunday 20th March, Järvafältet, Järfälla.
I was in the first part of the 3-part relay, and found the first leg tough – it was a really physical test, a mass-start run across thickly snowed fields. I made some poor route choice for the first few legs, especially 1-2 and 2-3, but I made up a few places in the latter half of the map. (The error in 2-3 was climbing and staying high on the ridge, whereas the control was in the easier, lower terrain to the west.) The fields on this map were actually the hardest running of all, as here the snow was a lot deeper. It was a relief to plunge back into the forests after a field crossing, like 8-9, and also going past the spectator control at 10 (I really felt the pain there.) Steeper slopes also meant less snow, so for once, these were not avoided. The relay map was certainly less technical, but harder physically. I preferred the individual race map.

Loch Katrine in the Trossachs. The event start was on the hill to the right.
The Trossachs are a long way from London, but they are in my opinion the best map in Britain, and also the one map that I’ve never completed a course at, despite several attempts. The promise of snow in the hills, and a holiday on Monday was the clincher – so I ended up catching an early flight (up at 4am, flying at 7am) to Edinburgh, where my dad picked me up and we headed over to The Trossachs, via the spectacular Duke’s Pass. Little snow in sight, but wonderful weather – cold but clear and sunny.

I ran M21S and yes – finally! – made it around the course. And in a pleasantly good time too. At one point I was second on the results list, behind a fellow JOKer, Jon Marsden. This slipped to 5th place once some faster EUOCers came in. However I was definitely in the top half, with an above-par time for the first time in ages. The course itself was lovely, a classic as always in this area, although staying to the north of the road, meaning the roughest part of the map was missed out – it was still extremely technical and extremely physical, and I made two big mistakes on the first two “real” legs of the course – 2 to 3, and 3 to 4. Both times I headed too far left, going far too high (most mistakes one would assume would be from going too low. I blame my compass) and having to double back both times. These mistakes only amounted to 5 minutes each though and the rest of the course was fine.

My time in the end was 88:30 for a 5.3km course with a most un-English 440m of climb. Now, 16.7 mins/km might sound extremely slow, and on most maps, yes, it would be a disaster. But consider that many of the best runners in Britain were running on the map (it was a FCC and Start race event) and that only one managed to run in less than 10 mins/km, and that puts thing in perspective. In southern England, British champions would typically do 6 mins/km, and I would be happy with 8 mins/km, and disappointed with 10 mins/km. But here in the Trossachs, 16.7 mins/km is just fine, and probably my second best run this year, after the week before. The winner on my course did a 73:43. I reckon I could have made around 78 minutes if I had had a run free from major mistakes – a virtual impossibility in terrain like this.

The Trossachs are possibly the best UK-based training I could have done for my next race: the 38th Annual Oxford vs Cambridge Varsity Match in Sweden, next weekend. And unlike the Trossachs, the snow is still very much there. Looking forward to it.

This should have been an easy event to get to – 25 minutes on the train. But the line was closed, and it took 90 minutes by bus in the end. It was snowing at Hatfield, and extremely cold, but I’m glad I made the effort, because this is a bit of a classic area. I often check out the areas on the OS map before going, and this one really looked a bit dull. But the OS map doesn’t tell the story at all. This is a fast area – think New Forest fast. At this time of the year, vegetation was pleasantly light, the main obstacle being large, impenetrable areas of rhodedendrons – thankfully indicated on the map. As long as you avoided these like the plague, you could get around pretty fast. And I did – one of my fastest runs for a long time, and I finished pleasantly high up the results board. Maybe I was going fast because it was so cold and stopping, in the zero-insulation running layer, would have been a Really Bad Idea. I ran Brown, an initially worrying 8.7km (especially on an empty stomach) but in the end it only felt like 7km.

My time was 66:23 for the 8.7km course with 125m of climbing – a par speed of 7.6km – matching the season’s best, although it was an exceptionally flat area. The winner did 50:45. On current form with a flawless run, I estimate I would have done it in about 60-61 minutes.

I made fewer mistakes than I normally do. The only significant one was going from 16-17 (not shown at this time.) I headed out of 16 45 degrees in the wrong direction, but was somewhat aware of this. I switched off mentally, pleased with my run thus far, and somehow missed a big track after 150m, running right over it and hitting a later track 350m away! I almost made a big mistake assuming the second was the first, but for once I trusted the compass, wised up and retreated. The only other mistake was leg 20-21, where I again came off at 45 degrees, and went hurtling down towards a dead end. Only around 2 minutes was wasted on each mistake though – unlike the 5 minute stinkers I’ve been making recently at other events.

Special thanks to the planner for planning an interesting course, which used the area to its best and provided an interesting route to follow and quite a few either-or legs – and also the organisers for letting me run late.

Oddly, there was a second map to be picked up halfway around the course. In this age of electronic timing, surely it wolud have been better to have the second map printed on the back of the first?

I didn’t enjoy this event, I have to say. It was flat and fast, and contained some areas of interesting technicality, but the map had some significant mistakes in it which impacted my run a lot. In addition, some legs were pretty uninspiring, there was one 800m leg which followed electricity pylons for pretty much the whole way, and another tedious section whcih involved going between a large road and a motorway – a necessity as the M4 M3 bisects a lot of maps around here, but still frustrating. In addition, the more interesting parts of the map (the SW section) was largely ignored by the planner, for my course.

The extract shows one of the more interesting parts of the map, rather that one of my big mistakes (see below.) Number 15 was reached by following an unmarked path that appeared to be 100m further north than where it was. And Number 17, on the top left of the extract, was made confusing as there were 3, not 2, obvious paths radiating west from the road’s car park. If you look carefully, you can see the third as a narrow ride, whereas in reality it was just as big as the other two.

I made a massive mistake from 3 to 4, following an unmarked “linear marsh” rather than the marked one, and ending up 300m too far SW, as the second extract here indicates. Comparing my splits with other similar runners (OUOC were out in force) I lost just over 5 minutes here – compounded by running an interesting way back to No. 4 once I worked out where I was, to avoid the stream of people coming the other way (nothing more embarrasing…)

For running M21S, a 7.4km course with a pleasant 95m of climbing, I took a not-great 67:36, or 9.1 mins/km.