O.O'Brien

The annual “Festive Frolic” put on by my old club, ELO was this morning. This year, for the first time, it was at the John Muir Country Park (rather than Yellowcraig) and was on a newly updated map – half the map is on a flat plantation, and the other half is on the changing dunes of “Spike Island”. This year’s race was “Sud-O-Ku” – going to each control on the score reveals a symbol (with coordinate) to be added to a grid – once all the controls are done, the Sudoku puzzle can be solved and the first back with a completed puzzle is the winner. However, 50 other features on the map were flagged with tinsel and another symbol and coordinate, so if you couldn’t do the puzzle, you could run around hoping to see as many of these as possible. In the end, I spent too long trying to find the extra tinsel features, and by the time I sat down to solve the puzzle, it was too easy – and others were already back. One of them was Jamie Stevenson, the British Champion and UK squad member – he didn’t win. Once again, nice weather – cold, with a bit of snow in the air, but no rain or gloom. The complementary soup at the end was timely, though.

After last week’s walk to the start and then painful limp home, my sprain seemed to have fixed itself more quickly. So, it was yet another cold crisp morning that found me in yet another South East London forest.

I ran down a course – Blue, so as not to push my luck with the sprain – however I didn’t feel a thing until I stepped awkwardly on a log on the way to No. 2. I went very gingerly to 3 and 4, deciding to retire, before changing my mind as the pain quickly went away this time – and went on to finish 3rd out of 25 on the course – however, this is more symptomatic of the quality of competition on a Blue standard course instead of my normal Brown – I wasted at least 5-6 minutes between 2 and 4 due to worrying about the injury, and my pace was 10+mpk – I would normally do 8-9 on an area like that.

Joydens Wood is not a great area – it has a lovely central section with fast, pleasant running (it was yet another cold, crisp and sunny day) but most of the rest of the forest is covered in thick vegetation, even in December. Also there were a couple of map inconsistencies and a real bingo control at one point. Still, it was nice to get out of the house and around another new map.

Joydens Wood has a famous dyke running through it that was built 1400 years ago to keep the (Roman) Londoners out of Saxon Kent! The planner had some fun and routed the final couple of controls directly up the dyke – nice!

Mistake analysis:
1: Poor mapping [misleading detail around control]
2: Hesitation [injury!]
3: Hesitation/Poor route choice [quickly learnt to avoid all marked undergrowth on this map]
4: Hesitation [almost retired here]
10: Bingo control [in a pit in featureless, dense undergrowth]
11: Map-reading error
12: Poor mapping [control was 70m SE of indicated location, in gully]
14: Poor route choice/Navigational error

Most of these mistakes were pretty minor, still 8 on a 15 control course in an easy area – I’m clearly slacking at the moment! Mind you, 3 were through no fault of my own, so not the greatest map either.

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.