Categories
Orienteering

Stress and Orienteering

Here is the summary of the previous season.

One of my fellow orienteers in JOK advanced the theory that the stress of work affects my results adversely. Case in point – after a week’s holiday, I got my best results of the season during the Scottish 6 Day. On the other hand, I generally perform badly in races in southern England, i.e. racing at the weekend when working at the week.

I think the truth is more that I’m better suited to the Scottish terrain (or my fellow southern England competitors are worse suited, when travelling up to Scotland.) I started orienteering in Scotland, and orienteered there for five years before moving to England. I’m not very fit and so am generally better on “technical” courses than physical ones. By physical here, I mean long distance and flatness allowing fast running, not physical as in the normal orienteering sense (hills, vegetation.) My best results of the season have been when I went to Scotland (Trossachs and Royal Deeside, running typically 6km races.) My worst results have been the longer, flatter, south England ones (World Cup areas in Surrey, 13km on the classic, pretty flat.)

Categories
Leisure

x-England Part 6

Overlooking (p0333)
I completed the east-most section of my cross-England bike ride on Sunday, going from Rochester to Whitstable, a major seaside resort in North Kent, on a beautifully sunny day for October. It was one of the longer days – 45 miles – but, as you would expect for the Thames/Medway, it was exceedingly flat.

I really did like Whitstable and there was some great parts on the route (see the last 10 photos on my x-England set) – the section near Colyer was really nice and uniquely “Kent”, and Newington seemed so nice that I wanted to buy a house there now (has a station on a line directly into London too) but I also passed some of the nastiest parts of the route so far. In particular, the long trawl through the industrial estates of Sittingbourne was depressing, and made Sittingbourne seem like it was entirely made of industrial estates (maybe it is?) Also, leaving Sittingbourne to the north was exceedingly grim. Some gypsies driving around in old Fords assured me that the way north was the route, but the burnt out cars and rubbish tips made me suspect something dodgy going on – so I went east instead from Sittingbourne, passing through what must be one of the most socially deprived areas in England.

Leaving Sittingbourne behind though, the approach to Whitstable was lovely, and the first glimpse of the open North Sea was a fitting end to the x-England journey. Now I just need to do the western half…

(Slight edits)

Categories
Orienteering Events Log

Lesnes Abbey Woods and Bostall Heath DFOK District Event, 2 October

Lesness Abbey WoodsThis was an interesting area – true “inner city” woodland, with several burnt out cars, wrecked motorbikes and event a burnt-out van at various points on the course. The area itself was suprisingly hilly too – 260m for a 5.9km course in SE England is pretty impressive – more so as this is inner city London. There is indeed an abbey in the woods too – just some ruined walls now, but a nice spot, surrounded by concrete housing estates…

My biggest mistake was on the approach to No. 8 – I dropped down an unmarked path above the control, a little early, and after thrashing around in the dark green, had to drop down, then around, then back up. But 8 to 9 was a superb leg, lovely and fast.

To sum up the area, there were some really nice pockets – one lovely section with no undergrowth and large trees was the very nicest of forest; but also too much green, and too many roads slicing up the area, to give a great run. But it was an unexpected challenge and quite unlike any other London park I’ve run in so far…

One look at the climbs on the course and I switched from Brown to Blue – I did the 5.9km/260m course in 53:13 (9.0 mins/km.) I finished a pleasing 4th out of 30 runners – the winner took 50:51.

Categories
Notes

Odd orienteering maps: No. 3 in a series

180603_woolmer.jpg It’s always a good idea to pay very careful attention to the map when out orienteering.

Categories
Orienteering Events Log

Hatfield Forest SOS Regional Event, 18 September

The forest is very nice to run in – a 1000 year old forest with very wide rides seperating pockets of varying runnability and visibility. Although some sections were rather “scraggly” and unpleasant, there were some great sections, especially near the end, with grand old trees and little vegetation for late summer.

Ran the M21S course, came 4th out of 8 runners/7 finishers. Time was 63:09 for the 6.92km course with no significant climb – 9.1mpk pace. Winner took 48:15. I had one very bad (9 minute) mistake coming into 14 – which was in thick, low visibility forest from which I had to relocate twice, compounded by then leaving the control 180 degrees in the wrong direction…

Categories
Leisure

x-England Part 5

Rochester Castle (p0275)

Another short-ish section (30 miles) of my Cross-England bike ride completed on Sunday afternoon. It’s really starting to get dark early these days – the light is fading after 7pm. The original plan was to go all the way to Sittingbourne, but with no trains running that far, I scaled back my plans, and eventually managed Erith to Rochester.

The section from Erith, through Crayford and Dartford, is really rather unpleasant, with dereliction and industry. The only redeeming part is a fantastic, high speed section, down a bike line beside the eight-line A2, of all things. Peaceful it wasn’t but fast and new it was. The view over to the massive Bluewater shopping centre is also impressive. From my vantage point, it reminded me a lot of a poor cousin to the Eden Project, both being modern, futuristic buildings set deep inside a chalk pit. Gravesend wasn’t amazing, a short section of it was so rough I was expecting to get jumped any minute – actually it was quite atmospheric, that bit. After then, an incredibly boring (but off road) section along side the Thames and Medway canal, brought me up to Higham, where a pleasant but meandering road section went over to Strood and Rochester, at one point down a road called “Admiralty Road, formerly Powder Monkey Lane.” I wonder why the residents wanted it changed…

Rochester Bridge is quite grand, the castle and cathedral were very nice to stroll around on, especially after the almost continuous industry I’d experienced for the preceding miles leaving East London. See all my Rochester pictures at the end of my X-England set here.

Categories
Leisure

X-England Part 4

Isle of Dogs (p0199)[Updated] I biked another section of my cross-England journey yesterday – going from Islington to Erith. (The Putney to Islington section I did a few months earlier – I might do it again via the cycle paths to “link up” fully.) The original plan was to go to Dartford, but I stopped a few miles short, at Erith, as it was getting dark – autumn is now rapidly approaching…

The first section was via the Regent’s Canal, I then picked up National Cycle Route 1 at Isle of Dogs, passed under the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, and then stayed on the Thames Path (also part of Route 1) on the south bank, for the rest of the way. It was not a particularly stunning leg – going through London was never going to be – but as ever, the view from Island Gardens, on the Isle of Dogs, to Greenwich was stunning.

The photos are at the end of my X-England photo set here.

So far:
III. Bedwyn to Reading
IV. Reading to Staines
V. Staines to Putney
Va. Putney to Islington
VI. Islington to Erith
VII. Erith to Rochester
VIII. Rochester to Whitstable

To do:
I. Portishead or Weston-super-mare to Bristol or Bath
II. Bristol or Bath to Devizes or Bedwyn
IIa. Devizes to Bedwyn.
Next weekend: The South Downs Way (from Buriton to Brighton or Lewes.)

Categories
Notes

Merge

I’m planning to merge YepSport and Yablog back into one weblog.

Why?

* Orienteering is still my principal extra-work activity so I’ll be updating YepSport throughout the year.
* I don’t update Yablog too much these days as I don’t do all that much interesting these days – this ain’t university any more, some of us have to work!
* More people read Yablog than YepSport.
* Some of those people are probably wondering why don’t post too much on Yablog.
* YepSport will be OK as a general blog, I think.

I might still back out from this idea – but it makes a lot of sense. I’ll think about it…

Categories
Training

Attackpoint

I’m recording my event results (and any training I happen to do – probably including the bike commute to work!) at Attackpoint.

See here for my orienteering/training activity in the last 28 days.

So far, I’m not hugely impressed with Attackpoint. It looks slick, but I got numerous errors when trying to add my first entry, mainly as I was inputting the time in the wrong format. Also, there seems no way to delete the activity categories that accidently got added when I was trying to correct the above issue. Still, the training log is a nice idea and presumably a good motivator – and it’s been built from an orienteering perspective, which is unique and great. I’ll probably wrap up the commuting in to a single weekly aggregate entry.

Categories
Orienteering Events Log

South Thorndon HAVOC District Event, 11 September

South Thorndon map extractAfter not being able to make it to last weekend’s Petersfield event due to a lack of trains running, this was my first event of the season. Having had a series of good M21S runs at the Scottish 6 day, I was tempted to pick a similar length of course, but as (a) this is Essex and (b) I should be capable of running more than 6km, I went for the Brown course – 9.3km with 120m of climb. The area was pretty flat, the middle part of the course was at on the same Thorndon North map that was my final race last season, and the running was fast and easy – very different to Scotland.

After a slow start (copying 22 controls down onto two maps) I made a mistake at the second control – a technical one, one of the few on the race, by misjudging distances on the map – only a 1 minute mistake though. 3-7 were simple – 4-7 in particular were real cross-country runner’s legs and not interesting at all. After entering the second map after number 8, I encountered a load of horseriders on the tracks – a bit of a hazard as you had to stop really for them to pass. I managed to come across the same pair of horses/riders about four times, going from control to control. The condition of Thorndon North was not too bad, considering it was September, but it was still a good idea to avoid any rough patches due to all the vegetation. I made a silly mistake at 12, again not judging the distance and not checking the compass, I beared 90 off about 100m before the control – wasting around 2 minutes. For No. 13 I was being very lazy and entered the immediate area around the control very slowly, wasting another minute. The forest was actually pretty dark here – for a white area – mainly due to the very grey skies that were keeping the Aussies away from the cricket too. 14-15 was rather pleasant, and here I caught up another Brown course runner, he was just slower than me but it was difficult to overtake him as I tried to go “alternative” routes to lose him, that nevertheless wasted a few seconds. After getting delayed by horses (again!) I fainlly caught up when he made a mistake at 19, and after that the only thing remaining was… an uphill finish! I hate uphill finishes, planner, what were you thinking! Anyway, it was a nice run around and the fact that the technical legs on a not very technical area, showed how out of fitness I was after six weeks off. And the following day (and today!) my legs really ached from the run – for only 9.3km, I have lost a lot of fitness.

Result (9.3km/120m climb):

Winner: 65:32 (7.0 mins/km)
Me: 73:34 (7.9 mins/km)
Position: 9th out of 21 runners, 20 finishers.

Next Sunday I am hoping to make it to the first regional event of the season for me, at Hatfield Forest, just north of London. Always nice living in central London – it’s dead easy to get anywhere from here.