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.
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. 
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. 
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.