O.O'Brien

timbean talks about Orienteering Blackholes – places in the UK where not much goes on – at least this time of year – in terms of events.

Looking at my Map of Orienteering Events, there certainly are some interesting patterns – the icons show events happening in the next ten weeks. The big clusters are around London, the Severn Estuary, and the Peak District. Hardly anything is going in East Anglia (possibly due to vegetation at this time of year), North Wales, or Hampshire/Dorset.

Surprisingly, very little is happening in Scotland either – considering that Scotland remains in condition until later in the summer, and that the best terrain in the UK is up here, it is odd that so little is going on. Maybe the Scots are bad at registering their events with the BOF, from which the map is largely derived? I certainly know some of the SE region clubs are, because I supplement the official listings with information gleaned from club websites – for the London area only.

This Tuesday, I headed off to Oxford for an informal evening event put on by TVOC at Brill village. The event is held every year, and I’ve been quite a few times in the last few years. Unfortunately Brill is not an easy village to get to – long ago, the London Underground used to stretch out that far – these days it’s a train out to Oxford, then an hour long cycle ride eastwards, over several hills and through several picturesque villages, before a final 80m ascent into the village itself. There are two things I always remember about Brill – the windmill and the nettles. This year, the nettles weren’t too bad, and the windmill looked very picturesque in the warm evening sunlight.

The map is another interesting thing about this race. Brill has a huge village common – bigger than the village itself. Part of the common extends right down the hill. The map is drawn, rather uniquely, with a contour interval of 1.67 metres. This year, the map was pre-printed (although we were still using pin-punches.) The map almost fits onto an A5 sheet, at 1:5000, so it really is a small area.

The race format was a mass-start, three loop race. Having arrived exhausted, and slightly late, I was allowed a breather before heading off into the common. The effect of three loops over the same area meant that the common was pretty thoroughly visited, as the aerial photograph of my race shows:

The colours correspond to my heart-rate. A couple of features stand out – the climb to the finish/loop changeover point with me finding the climb tough (red) every-time I approached it, and my extended pause (blue-green) at the northern end of the course, when I thought I had missed out an earlier control.

For some reason, the weather is always very nice for the Brill race. Hopefully next year’s will continue in the tradition.

I seem to fairly regularly screw up the first leg on orienteering courses. Often, the shorter the first leg, the worse the mistake. It’s as if I need a moment or two on a course to “warm up” my navigational abilities, just like I need a moment or two before the start to warm up my muscles.

Sunday (Day 3 of the JK) was a particularly bad example. There were a lot of factors against me – I was late for my start, I had just cycled 12km uphill from the station to the event arena, it was my third really early start in as many days so I was very sleep deprived, it was snowing, windy and very cold, there was no club tent to change in as it was so early, my thumb-compass had developed a large bubble in it, and my left inside knee started hurting a lot while jogging to the start line. This was worrying – I freak out every time my knee hurts, after a long and frustrating recovery from a previous knee injury in 2003.

So, I was not best prepared for what was going to be a 12.7km cold, wet slog over exposed moor and forest. I rushed through the start, without having time to warm up, check the sample map or check the start direction. As I picked up my map, I was relieved to see the first control was a straightforward 200m away. I carelessly charged forward, and completely missed it:

10:15 for a 200m leg. My official split is 13:15 as I was three minutes late off the start. After this rather unfortunate start, and concerned about the knee, I decided to bail – I diverted to the last third of the course, ambled around it, getting even colder in the process, limped back to the finish and now-erected club tent, gratefully accepted an early lift to the station, and spent the rest of the day in the warm and the dry.