After yesterday’s damp run, the weather was much sunnier today – and indeed I took most of my race photos today. The terrain was wonderfully technical, but not too physical and I had probably the best run of my 5 days, here.
The very beginning of the course was a technical minefield, with the runners being thrust into the confusing and tightly detailed area in the south west of the map. Almost everyone in the JOK made big mistakes going to the first control – a parallel error was common. Thankfully I was one of the few to have a clean run in this early stage. Indeed after yesterday’s nightmare, today I made only two mistakes costing me more than five minutes, although I did make four two-minuters. My time of 96 minutes was still well over 10 mins/km and still in the bottom half of all finishers, but I enjoyed my run and was pleased with quite a few legs here; while many of my (British) contempories were technically disqualified for taking over two hours on this stage.
Leg 3 to 4 offered the most interesting route choice, being the longest leg and an out-of-bounds (OOB) section blocking the direct route. Glancing at the map, I planned to go in a roughly straight line, bearing left around the OOB – as this would involve the least running and the general rule in these forests is that it’s best to go straight. There are so few paths, and the undergrowth and “green” areas are so sparse, that the traditional British detour is not normally worth it. I ended up going both left and right around the OOB in the end, as I had a bit of a change of plan en route and turned 90 degrees. The normal rule I go by is once I’m committed, go for it. But the terrain was tricky and detailed, and an obvious road that I bizarrely hadn’t seen earlier, offered a tempting, but longer, route. I probably wasted 3-4 minutes having to backstep, but I’m glad I did as thereon the rest of the leg to 4 was fast and easy. The fourth control turned out to be perched in a crevice on a cliff-face, and I turned the wrong way on approaching it, but still this was one of my better controls and I caught up at least one of the other JOK-ers here.
From then on, it was straightforward. A dreadful mistake ensued at No. 10, where I was distracted by the large number of people and controls and stopped concentrating for a moment – fatal in Sweden. No. 14 was my other five-minuter. Being the second last control, I had completely switched off. Instead of going either above or below the cliff, like everyone else, I decided to go through, then up the cliff. Duh. And once again I got distracted. But I’d estimate I didn’t waste more than 20 minutes on mistakes – still a huge amont of time, but I wasted over 30 minutes yesterday.
It was incredibly hot when I got back to the finish and a spot of sunbathing was in order, before retreating back to our hired club hut (picking up that day’s free gift from the event sponsors – toilet paper (!?!?) on the way) from where we didn’t move again today. Doing absolutely nothing after racing hard is so nice…
Out of just 12 controls on the 7.33km course I managed to stuff up 5 controls, wasting over 5 minutes on four of them. A combination of parallel errors, unfamiliarity with the 1:15000 and sheer recklessness meant I took around 105 minutes to finish the course, well done on most others in JOK, the club I was running with (and a good group to compare with – after all, none of us – Nick Barrable excepted – were ever going to be able to compete with “the Scandies” on level terms. 
After arriving in Gothenburg on Saturday on a horribly early morning flight, and getting so lost on the way from the airport (always an embarrassment for any orienteer) that we ended up twice as far away from the city than we started, no one was really up for too much orienteering. But the following day was the last day before the O-Ringen proper, so we picked the most interesting training area and went for a “free run” on the map. Of course, everyone was fresh from running in the easy southern England forests, and the longest suggested circuit on the map (around 7km) looked a cinch. It actually turned out to be a harder and much more physical area than the competition areas, and the steady drizzle didn’t help for an easy circuit. A rather scary “bridge”, or rather, a submerged plank, across a large marsh, caused many to pause for a considerable time. I had to cut my own circuit short after running out of time.
The first extract here was typical of the first part of the course. Going from 2-6, the “green” marked proved very rough indeed and I had to give up and retreat at one point. The marshes were extremely wet, cold and unpleasant – in sharp contrast, the competition areas would prove to have good, fast marshes, but I was initially nervous of using them after today. 
This was the third leg in the Frolic summer series of events put on by London orienteering clubs, like the others the format was a 3km handicap race followed by a similar length sprint race. This was also my O-Ringen warm-up event (!) – hardly Sweden, in fact possibly the easiest area I’ve ever been on. Interestingly the winning speeds for the sprint race, which used the confusing Sheen Common only were slower than for the Frolic race, which used the fast, open parkland more. Ed Catmur won both incidently. My times were OK too – comfortably below my 8 min/km target speed.
The sprint race was more interesting. I didn’t realise, until picking up the map, that it was in the trickier Sheen common. The course was well designed and was a true sprint, with dead-level running, tight, close legs and enough on the map so that you had to keep your brain switched on. Every leg of mine was finished in under 60 seconds, except for an unfortunate (any mistake in a sprint is very unfortunate) error between 2 and 3 – see left – where I went east through the rough and then some how ended up in the marsh marked. It took a little while to extract myself from the vegetation. From there it was plain sailing to the end – the prior Frolic race helping with the layout, admittedly. I glimpsed Ed about half way around and so sprinted the rest of the way, but he was doing well under 5 mins/km and was never for the catching.
This was the second Frolic event of the summer season, put on by LOK this time. Trent park surrounds Trent University and is a rather pleasant mix of parkland and rough open, with small pockets of forest to slow down the pace. Considering it’s July, the undergrowth was not too bad at all, and the weather was pleasantly cool and dry. Like last week, it’s not a technical area, and so not ideal “training” for the Oringen in just two weeks. Still, it’s good to get out of London’s heart and experience another new area. I took part in the 3km main race, caning it around and finishing in a great time (for me) but decided to sit out the following sprint race, as I was pretty tired already, and besides – they’d packed up the start! 
I suppose if I made any big mistake, it was going from No. 9 to 10 – I was right behind another competitor and because I really don’t like following, I decided to take a cunning (and more direct) route than going around on the paths. Unfortuantely the rough open was rough – it is July after all, and the other person gained 10 seconds on me here by whizzing around the path and then on an unmarked path.
I’m never one to skip a chance at orienteering, not only because it’s just a short train ride, but also because it’s one of southern England’s best orienteering areas – indeed parts of the forest feature in my 
