This is the annual “OK Nuts” Trophy event organised by SLOW, my home club, with the planner and organiser both JOKers (i.e. from JOK, my second club.) So I had no excuse not to turn up. Plus it was inside the M25 and was London’s finest area that I had never been to – I think.
Also special about this event, and the reason why I again ran up on the M21L course, was that this years “special feature” (there always is one for OK Nuts ) was the inclusion of a “Micro-O” course.
(I’ll write more about the Micro-O in a seperate post.)
Esher is a large map, made up of several commons, bisected unfortunately by the A3 and another busy road, and some housing – otherwise it would be a very fine area indeed. Oxshott Heath is very technical, but a bit brambly, while Esher North, the MicroO area, also has some excellently technical areas. “West End” is faster and simpler, with a (very) steep slope down to Winterdown Wood for the finish. A nice mix and an enjoyable area, although not quite as unique as Epping Forest last week.
No. 1 was immediately into a technical area, full of pits, but was straightforward, as was 2, 3 (2-3 a plod along tracks), and 4. 5 was my first mistake, I got slightly disorientated in a maze of paths and brambles and spent a while searching in the wrong area for the control – a 1 minute error. 6, 7 and 8 were OK, 9 again was made more difficult by the brambles and maze of paths. 10 was my only really big error. A long leg, I somehow drifted to the east near the end and ended heading up 90 degrees in the wrong direction, and needed to double back. Maybe a 2 minute mistake here. 11 was a plod, 12, 13 and 14 were straightforward (and nice.) 15-19 were the MicroO controls, I’ll say more about them in another blog entry. 20 was another track plod but I was so “spaced out”/disorientated by MicroO and the map scale change I actually missed the great big track initially. Scary stuff. 21 was OK although I oddly exited this control nearly 180 degrees in the wrong direction (WTF?!). 22 was a dog-leg, 23 was good, 24 was nice too (I climbed up and stayed high.) 25 was a rather exciting plunge down a very steep bank. Some people hurled themselves off this like lemmings, but I climbed down carefully. 26 and 27 were on a trail, and then – the sting in the tail – 28 was a long, difficult leg with plenty of route choice. I was very tired by the point, and stayed low – too low, almost running off my map, as most other competitors had a “Sprint O” section here. But I got lucky, finding a path through some wet, green terrain.
Mistakes:
5: Poor map-reading.
10: Poor navigation/poor route-choice.
18: Hesitation.
28: Hesitation.
All in all, a pretty clear run – a world away from last Sunday’s race. Crucially, I didn’t run out of energy after 6km or so, but was able to maintain a good pace the whole way around. Maybe my much slower pace in the MicroO helped me a lot to recover for the final 3km. Conditions were good – still very cold, but clear, and most importantly dry underfoot. I did however twist my ankle twice (again – I twisted it twice last Sunday too) causing me to tread carefully for a couple of legs – 4 and 25. It’s slightly concerning that I keep doing this, as it’s bound to be putting a lot of stress on the ligaments.
My time was 80:36 for the 10.4km, 225m course. I thought that was a really good time initially, but Esher is really, really fast – I finished 52nd of 92 runners, my lack of mistakes in the MicroO gaining me three places, but my relative slowness in that section (I was 66th out of 92 in terms of time only for the MicroO) probably cost me another four…
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.
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.