The atmosphere for this event was great, with the World Cup Long Distance race in the morning and the spectator race in the afternoon. There was a real international feel about the event, and the location was superb, the assembly area in a field high up in the Surrey hills, the weather warm and sunny.
Shame I had such a disasterous race really, finishing almost last. This was largely due to me not doing any training, or attending any events, for the previous six weeks – and unwisely choosing to run M21L (long) , having been running M21S (short) for the rest of the season thus far. I had a reasonable run for the first 2/3rds of the course, and would have posted a reasonably respectable time had I kept going at that base all the way, however I massively ran out of energy at around control 16, and ended up walking a large part of the remaining two kilometres, so ending up clocking over 2 hours out on the 12.9km course with 505m of climbing. (In the end, my time was an appalling 142:02, finishing 61st out of 63 finishers, plus 5 mps and one nc runner. The winner took 74:00.)
Mind you, even before I ran out of energy, I had not had an A1 run. Yes, it’s easier to lose physical fitness than “mental awareness” of orienteering, but I still made several stupid and tiring mistakes that I can only blame on having not orienteered in the previous weeks. For example, going from 2 to 3, I stopped at the drinks point, and then hurted down the hill, only to realise at the bottom that I had completely forgotten about control 3 and had been running to control 4. I had run all the way back up the hill… Also in leg 11-12, shown in the extract here, I (and several of my contempories, I should add) plunged down into the ravine and then crawled up the steep hill to 12. What I should have done of course was to go round to the left and stay high – distance wise it was longer, but it would have avoided the exhausting climb completely. I never really recovered from the climb to 12, and I think this triggered my gradual deteriation later in the course.
The graph shows my control-by-control performance compared with the 3 people who finished just in front of me. I’m the tan line – the red line for the latter part of the race shows how I would normally have run – the uptick at the end as I tradtionally finish strongly compared with my contempories. See how my speed just tanks after control 16, allowing the three to overtake.
Oh well, there was always the next event to look forward to two days later…
This was a fast map, even in the snow, with intricate sections balanced with fast, straightforward ones. The best part of the map, shown here, was visited twice by both courses. Although tracks made by earlier runners certainly helped, it was easy to miss the marked paths as these were covered in snow. As usual, though, the high quality and pretty much faultless cartography meant every contour could be trusted 100%, which made things easier. Note that the contour interval is 4m, but there are a lot of form lines (aka intermediate contours) in some sections – many more than would normally be on a UK map. Anyway, I enjoyed this course and found it easier going than the last time I was on a VM course in Sweden – back in 2002.
I was in the first part of the 3-part relay, and found the first leg tough – it was a really physical test, a mass-start run across thickly snowed fields. I made some poor route choice for the first few legs, especially 1-2 and 2-3, but I made up a few places in the latter half of the map. (The error in 2-3 was climbing and staying high on the ridge, whereas the control was in the easier, lower terrain to the west.) The fields on this map were actually the hardest running of all, as here the snow was a lot deeper. It was a relief to plunge back into the forests after a field crossing, like 8-9, and also going past the spectator control at 10 (I really felt the pain there.) Steeper slopes also meant less snow, so for once, these were not avoided. The relay map was certainly less technical, but harder physically. I preferred the individual race map.
I ran M21S and yes – finally! – made it around the course. And in a pleasantly good time too. At one point I was second on the results list, behind a fellow JOKer, Jon Marsden. This slipped to 5th place once some faster EUOCers came in. However I was definitely in the top half, with an above-par time for the first time in ages. The course itself was lovely, a classic as always in this area, although staying to the north of the road, meaning the roughest part of the map was missed out – it was still extremely technical and extremely physical, and I made two big mistakes on the first two “real” legs of the course – 2 to 3, and 3 to 4. Both times I headed too far left, going far too high (most mistakes one would assume would be from going too low. I blame my compass) and having to double back both times. These mistakes only amounted to 5 minutes each though and the rest of the course was fine.
