O.O'Brien

I didn’t enjoy this event, I have to say. It was flat and fast, and contained some areas of interesting technicality, but the map had some significant mistakes in it which impacted my run a lot. In addition, some legs were pretty uninspiring, there was one 800m leg which followed electricity pylons for pretty much the whole way, and another tedious section whcih involved going between a large road and a motorway – a necessity as the M4 M3 bisects a lot of maps around here, but still frustrating. In addition, the more interesting parts of the map (the SW section) was largely ignored by the planner, for my course.

The extract shows one of the more interesting parts of the map, rather that one of my big mistakes (see below.) Number 15 was reached by following an unmarked path that appeared to be 100m further north than where it was. And Number 17, on the top left of the extract, was made confusing as there were 3, not 2, obvious paths radiating west from the road’s car park. If you look carefully, you can see the third as a narrow ride, whereas in reality it was just as big as the other two.

I made a massive mistake from 3 to 4, following an unmarked “linear marsh” rather than the marked one, and ending up 300m too far SW, as the second extract here indicates. Comparing my splits with other similar runners (OUOC were out in force) I lost just over 5 minutes here – compounded by running an interesting way back to No. 4 once I worked out where I was, to avoid the stream of people coming the other way (nothing more embarrasing…)

For running M21S, a 7.4km course with a pleasant 95m of climbing, I took a not-great 67:36, or 9.1 mins/km.

This was a well attended local event, the local was just down the road from the excellent Bagshot Heath map. My last event however was back in October, so I wasn’t too suprised to get a fairly slow time (it was sub 9mins/km, but the winner did sub 7mins/km.)

I took 48:23 to get around the 5.55km Blue course, which had a suprising amount of climbing in it. The terrain however was extremely pleasant, as long as you looked out for the loose barbed wire, trip hires, and hidden bolt holes in this typical army training area. The course design was tight and I managed to make a number of mistakes, including an extremely silly one near the end that cost me at least 4 minutes and 50m.

Finally – a rhetorical question. Why can’t more events be on Saturdays? This was an easy 40 minute train journey away from Waterloo, thanks to the frequently Saturday timetable – I would have had a 90 minute journey if it had been on Sunday. Also there was no way I would have made it on Sunday due to a Saturday night party as I would have been too tired (ironically in the end I was too tired from this event to make it to the Saturday night party…)

I almost missed this event, missing a train connection. I made it half an hour after the start closed, having to do a “DIY” start in the end. My glasses also fell apart during the rush at the start (I now wear contacts) which somewhat hindered my progress through the forest – the main issue was I couldn’t see undergrowth directly in front and so frequently ended up impaled on the local flora.

Anyway… I really liked this area, in fact it would rank just outside my top 10 all time areas. It’s a military training area, with tank tracks, light forest and crazy, confusing line features – ideal for technical orienteering, really. I had an OK run considering my reduced visibility – taking 77 minutes to do an 8.02km, 220m circuit. My par time would have been around 65-70 minutes. Some parts of the forest contained enough tracks to really confuse me – one particularly interesting one looped up a slope, then straight back down, then up, then down… Gigantic, man-made puddles/ponds in the very wide roads also presented the competitors with the classic through-or-round choice. Only as these were man-made, some were deliberately much deeper than expected.

Bagshot is a classic bit of Berkshire forest – the county is full of long, rolling forests that remind me of parts of the Scottish Highlands (without the mountains) – and I’m planning to be back fairly regularly to the general area for other orienteering events.

Another epic bike/train/bike trip to get to the start of this one – made more interesting by the railway station being a good 150m below the event start. Trosley Country Park is a lot like Shotover Park, an area in Oxford I’ve been many times. The sharp drop at the edge of the North Downs dominates the whole area, with the flat, wooded section in the north abruptly halted by the steep, 100m drop down in open countryside.

The Blue course, which I did, had an impressive 200m climb (this is southern England, remember) and 24 controls, for just 6.5km. The route basically involved two loops, which meant climbing the big embankment twice – but also plunging down it uncontrollably twice.

My time was over 10 mins/km – 68:31 – but the winner managed only just under 9mins/km and I was well up the list in the end. Simon Evans, another SLOW M21er, had a flying race to finish second.

I had no problems with my back after last week’s disappointment, although the excitement continued on my way back home – I built up some speed on the 150m drop back to the railway station, and misjudged a roundabout badly, taking quite a tumble on the kerb and basically writing off my bike. 2 years service around Oxford and a month in London – it deserved better, but it took the impact for me thankfully and I escaped with just scraped hands and a lot of shock. Oh, and I missed the train…

This was a bit of an epic to get to, tucked between the South Downs and the Channel, near lovely Arundel, My epic relay of a bike ride to Victoria, a 90 minute train journey, and another four mile bike ride, got me warmed up, but I twisted my back just as I was coming down the last hill to the event site. It was the usual back pain problem, in the same place as before. So I had to sit it out – I bought some proper O-shoes, finally, for the season, while I was there. By all accounts it was a tougher area than the map looked, particularly the Nore Hill section which had some interesting looking earth features (I didn’t see them as I wasn’t walking anywhere.) The prospect of a long journey back with a bad back making movement difficult, was initially very daunting, but in the end it wasn’t that bad, and I was back running in a few days.