O.O'Brien

(Cross posted from Attackpoint. See also my leg by leg analysis, mistake and speed analysis, and the other M21L splits from APers. Wow, does AP do stats or what!)

Oh, blimey. What went right on this race? Not a lot. I better start with the positives – lovely crisp weather, technical and enjoyable area, and my recent training means I can definitely run faster and for longer, without completely running out of energy. And the distance (almost 13km) was not a problem – I only felt really tired in a couple of places.

Now the bad. I made mistake after mistake after mistake. Probably the most number of mistakes I have ever made on an orienteering event. It wasn’t that it was very technical – it was a tricky area and the map was not perfect – quite a few non-existent clearings around – it was just that I made bad route choices, lost concentration, and made huge navigational errors all the way along. I know bad workmen blame their tools, but I’m pretty sure my compass was stuffed. Maybe it was that large “Emit” brick I had to carry around. And the scale was 1:15000, smaller than normal, but due to my relatively increased fitness, I overcompensated and overshot a lot. I think the main cause was I was running quite fast, thanks to my recent training – too fast, in fact, for me to navigate accurately and properly. Which kind of leaves me in a quandary as regards further physical training. I think I need to take up Armchair Orienteering in a big way and keep the mind sharp.

The first control was bad. I somehow missed an obvious path, and was 30 degrees wrong, and overshot. No. 2, I again headed 30 degrees wrong, meeting control 24. But I at least spiked it. Towards number 6, I felt a little tired, and a branch spiked my eye – could have been really nasty, but my contact lens dropped out and I spent a couple of minutes fixing that. Towards number 8, my feet started cramping again (as two weeks ago) so I stopped straight away this time and relaced loosely. 10 was a bingo control and I failed to notice a good route choice. 11 was a massive error of judgement – to lose a runner, I decided to go down a road (failing to spot a much better road route), mistaked a ride for a path, got stuck in a marsh, ran back down a hill and back up again. Aaargh!

No. 14 was a complete disaster, it should have been trival, but it was a very technical control and I some how ended up on the wrong path and had to do a relocation. 20 was a poor route choice. I was feeling (technically) lazy and took a long but easy route around, adding 600m to the leg by failing to spot a direct and obvious path, and then missing the (technical) control. And 22 was a complete nightmare and my worst leg of all (8 minutes for 400m!) I again drifted 30 degrees off, ending up way beyond the control, cold and very confused. I had a complete brain block, was unable to navigate and relocate, and just freaked out. Eventually I got some self control back and managed a relocation. I really hope I never have a control like that again. Looking at the leg, it was not particularly technical at all – lots of line features.

Special mention of control 19, it wins Location of the Year for being in an utterly surreal place – in white (runnable forest) but the forest was completely pitch black, with nothing on the ground except needles – like a table. And the control was in the middle, glowing eerily in the darkness. It was like something out of Lord of the Rings, and was truly magical.

Overall a truly fine area. Just a shame I had such a bad race on it.

Mistake analysis:
1 – Poor pacing/scale awareness
2 – Navigational error
6 – Fatigue
8 – Hesitation
10 – Bingo control
11 – Poor route choice
14 – Poor attack point
17 – Poor route choice
20 – Poor route choice
22 – Navigational error
25 – Hesitation
26 – Navigational error

I’ve only mentioned the biggest mistake on each leg, on some of these legs I made just about every possible kind of mistake! Incidentally I may start using just the AP’s own mistake analysis for future races.

Cross posted from Attackpoint

Overcast, but not too cold today. This should have been an area I did well on – reasonably technical and flat – but I made too many mistakes, and also cramped up. The area was full of paths and differing vegetation – in fact it was quite difficult to read the map in places. Or maybe my eyesight’s just getting worse…

I got off to a good start running hard as I had another runner right behind me. Unfortunately I was running too fast to read the map properly, and so towards No. 6 I thought I was on a parallel track, so wasted a few seconds looking for a non-existent feature… 6-7 was a long leg – over 1km. My feet started to cramp up badly here which was very painful. This is not something that has happened before, and may be a combination of running hard in my cheap backup shoes (my regular ones were still covered in mud from Eridge) and tieing up the shoes too tight. From 7 to 8, I stopped for a clear 3 minutes to redo the laces and try and get rid of the cramp – it worked, but I had lost a lot of time by that point.

Control 11 was tricky, planted very low in a small ditch – a bit of a bingo control. For 12, I made a map-reading mistake and somehow ended up on the wrong side of a lake, and for 13, I got stuck in a thicket. Then followed a number of mistakes due to tiredness and poor route choice. None of these mistakes cost me more than a minute each, but they all add up… The worst one was at 19, where I first came out east when I meant to go north; then didn’t aim off, turning away in the wrong direction from my “attack point.” Finally, the 460m, slightly uphill run-in was a bit of a killer.

All in all, really not good a race at all. I much preferred the mud-bath at Eridge last week, although few would agree. Next event, I’ll use my proper O-shoes, tie them loosely and try and get a proper meal before the race!

Simon Evans had a storming run and came in in 59:38. He beat me on every leg bar one. One to watch this season.

Mistake analysis:
6 – Parallel error
7 – Hesitation (foot cramp)
8 – Hesitation (foot cramp)
12 – Poor map reading
13 – Unanticipated hazard
14 – Fatigue
17 – Poor route choice
19 – Poor navigation, poor attack point

I received a couple of excellent cartography-themed books this Christmas:

Mapping Hacks (referral) is an O’Reilly book and is right up my street – I had it high on my wish list. Although unfortunately it was published just before the Google Maps API was made available and everyone when Google Maps Mashup crazy, it nevertheless contains a great pile of neat, computer-based GIS and mapping tricks, and background information – such as how to convert between the various coordinate systems, plot the “great circle” on a flat map, and even how to publish your own geodata to the internet for others to use. Note though that some of the tips are PC only, and some are only useful in the US, due to the vast amount of geographic information available for free on the internet from the US Military and US government. Sadly, the UK is a bit behind in opening up its GIS data, so another US military website, GNS is where I’ve sourced a list of coordinates for UK features for playing with one of the hacks. The book has a website (or rather, the latter spawned the former.)

You Are Here (referral) was an unexpected, but similarly essential present. The book is described as “Personal geographies and other maps of the imagination” – think of it as a glossy art book – but entirely composed oa maps, old and new. The presentation is top-quality and the “artwork” is simply beautiful. Daniel Wallingford’s A New Yorker’s View of the United States (c. 1939) reminds me a lot of a more contempory map I saw once of “The UK, according to Londoners” which has Great London occupying most of southern England, and “icebergs and floes” somewhere up in Scotland – the roads stop at Jocks Lodge somewhere in Northern England, and beyond, Here Be Dragons. Similarly in Wallingford’s piece, Staten Island is just north of Florida, and the state of Hollywood (capital, LA) is just south of California – which is itself dwarfed by the state of San Francisco.

Eridge Park is a rather nice, grand old county estate in East Sussex, comprising a large central deer park (fast, featureless, open) surrounded by several areas of complex, quite steep woodland. Or, at least, it would have been rather nice if it hadn’t rained continously throughout the course. I ran M21S, mainly because the 11.7km M21L sounded like a little much after Christmas excess. But, despite the rain and the mud (and wow, there was so much mud!) I got around the course pretty well – 5 mistakes in the first 7 controls, then none for the remaining 14, and got a pleasantly good time. I really didn’t push myself though, and got the end with enough energy for at least another couple of km. A pleasureable post-race afternoon was spent out of the wind and rain in a local pub by Eridge station, where the usual post-race analysis, splits games and real ale drinking was carried out with fellow JOKers and SLOWies. I’ve now got to spend the next three weeks doing some serious training for a national event at the end of the month at Cold Ash, for which I’ve foolishly entered Long without knowing the course distance.

Mistake analysis:
2 – (Very) poor route choice
3 – Navigation error followed by parallel error
4 – Unanticipated hazard (tricky felling)
6 – Unanticipated hazard (steep slopes + green + mud)
7 – Navigation error, poor pacing, possibly poor mapping.

The extract shows controls 2, 3 and 4, all of which I messed up. I took a very poor route choice to No. 2, which involved a roundabout route across various streams followed by a big climb – if I had studied the map, there was a much more obvious route which involved a short climb followed by an easy jog along a path. No. 3 was really daft of me – I came out of the control heading due east, and in the easy terrain, kept going straight instead of swinging around. I then made a parallel error by mistaking a fork in the stream, and headed up it – almost to No. 4. And 3 to 4 was made difficult by felling extending lower than marked, plus it was extremely slippy in the mud and the rain. My compass and map were both caked in mud by this point.