O.O'Brien

Here’s an analysis of two particular sections of the maps used during the French 5-days event in early July. Click on the map fragments to see an enlarged copy.

The first is on the fourth day – where upon starting the race I realised it was 3km shorter than it was supposed to be. My feet were in too much pain for me to pick up the pace though and consequently I had a very easy and trouble-free race indeed, until, in earshot of the finish, I switched off my ‘orienteering brain,’ went on to autopilot and immediately made the most embarrassing mistake of the whole week.

After a very easy 11-12-13-14 with loads of people making control-spotting a cinch, I started to head towards 15. The hill ahead was low, but I planned to swing right and then contour around it, eventually hitting the straight path
and two more paths while running east and then going straight on to Control 15. As you can see, I forgot to bear to the left when contouring around, and instead, hit another set of paths, which I thought were the first. It was only when I could actually see the finish (double circle just after 17) I realised something was amiss, and had to swing back. This mistake probably cost me 120 seconds – significant in this ‘sprint’ race and sufficient for me to drop more than 10 places on the leaderboard.

This next one was on the final day of the competition – a hard, physical course in sweltering temperatures, with long open sections. Leg 5-6 was long (almost 2km – the blue vertical lines are 500m apart) and, after a tough,
epic-Sahara-crossing run down a wide surfaced track, with no protection from the tree plantation on either side (dark green on the map,) it offered a multitude of route choices for the exhausted but discerning competitor – left,
slightly left, over the hill, or to the right (Left, right are in terms of the runner, so looking at the map, the runner’s left is a right here.) I chose to go over the hill, as you can see from my red route line. Bad mistake. It was direct, but the hill was bigger than I thought (contours are at 2.5m interval) and I quickly tired in the heat of the open hillside. Worse, the path was very sandy – two steps up meant one down again. Notice the wobble just before
summitting the hill, this was where I realised my route choice mistake, tried to come off the path to contour around the hill, and ran straight into heavy felled rough open – a no go without longer legs. So the question is, what was the best route choice of all? Rob P went slightly left, over some rough fell, but I know most went right. Normally the most direct way is the fastest way – in this instance this was not true. Making good route choice decisions on the fly and ‘live updating’ your route plans is a crucial skill to have when orienteering at a non-novice level and it’s one that I’m still learning.

6-7 was a cinch for me, it was doubly satisfying to note several competitors hitting the spur too early, and turning back down the hill in a fruitless search. 7-8 of my route looks very indirect, but I wanted to avoid thick
vegetation (green dots on green) at all costs after Day 1’s mare. Another Oxford orienteer got trapped in the vegetation immediately on exiting 7, and got so tired he forgot to go to 8, and went to 9 instead – a complete disaster racewise from his point of view.

I’m back! After a highly enjoyable week in south west France, at the biennual ‘5-Jour de France’ festival of orienteering, on this year’s Oxford Uni OC club tour.

I didn’t do particularly well at the event, much to do with my poor level of fitness as to the exceptional heat (up to 35 degrees celsius on the last day!) but it was a great experience, with the sandy forests proving to have a distinctive style.

I’m hoping to write a couple of more technical articles in the next couple of days analysing particular legs of courses (with map extracts.) And hopefully some of the many photos I took will be online in due course too. For now, here’s a summary of the week:

Sunday – after crashing on Martin’s floor in North Oxford, with my mum taking away four years of junk accumulated in college, I jumped on the last bus to Stansted and flew with the 10 or so other OUOC orienteers and some JOKers (the alumni club) to Biarritz. There were superb views of the huge forest in the Landes region that we would be in, from the plane – unfortuantly I ended up deleting all these pics… After hiring cars at Biarritz we headed to the campsite, a simple but pleasant one set in attractive pine woodland, a couple of hours north at Lit et Mixe. 15 tents, and one hammock, were pitched in a rough circle. We received our exclusive tour kit – the tricolor design would later on manage to confuse some competitors into thinking we were the French national team…

Monday – Etage 1. This was only a few minutes from the campsite, although a 2km along the “car park” road in a sweltering, dusty atmosphere was a taste of things to come. I was running H21A despite having done little recent
orienteering, and how I paid for it on the first day. A silly route choice, five minutes into the race, led me to get trapped in three metre high bracken and gorse. I reached up to wipe the sweat off my forehead, only to see my
hands covered in blood – a nasty gash to the head and I was leaking claret all over the place. Panicking slightly, I eventually escaped and then wandered all over the place, dazed, trying to find the control – wasting 45 minutes in the process and exhausting myself for the latter stages of the race. There was another serious mistake later on caused by exhaustion, and I found myself running from drinks point to drinks point, via as many trees as possible.
Eventually I slunk in nearly three hours after I had started, finishing 158th out of 159 finishers (there were a lot of retirals) – and I really feel sorry for the guy I beat! It was by far my worst ever result. After showers, we transferred to the local beach – Plage de l’Homy – to do some serious sun bathing. I had naively forgotten trunks and flip flops, so avoided a much needed dip in the Atlantic. Despite downing several litres of water I still dehydrated and got a headache. The evening finished up with a hearty pasta meal bought in a somewhat surreal supermarché (entirely surrounded by a forest – like most things in Landes) and cooked at the campsite.

Tuesday – Etage 2. This was in the same area, with a different start. The weather was once again hot, with blue skies all around. This was my latest start (12.35) and after yesterday’s nightmare I was playing it very defensively indeed, forcing myself to go slow and keep welll away from any ground vegetation. In the event, I had a much better run, having learnt a lot of tactics from the previous day – drink absolutely loads before and after the
race, avoid paths as you just slip on the sand, plan your route to use drinks points sensibly, and be cautious. I finished 139th out of 168 finishers, and missed out on my 100 minute target by 40 seconds – by foolishly switching off just before the end and heading for an incorrect flag 200m south of where I should have been. Everyone was too hot and tired so we went straight to the beach – I had by now purloined trunks so was able to do a bit of swimming and wave-dodging/breaking in the ocean, which was great fun – it’s an excellent beach. Then it was back to the campsite for a well earned rest.

(The picture, by the way, is of Pippa (OUOC) and Tim (JOKer) posing with our hired surfboard at the beach on Day 4.)

The third day was the earliest start for myself and my compatriots. Each club member is allocated roughly similar start times each day – Oxford’s for Day 2 were around midday, but for today, we had 8am starts! Incredible as it may seem, we were actually delighted about this – OK, the early start meant the previous evening’s trip to the wine bar had to be shorter than normal, but running at 8am was so much more pleasant temperature rise. The day also started quite cloudly, and really, it was the most pleasant of all the days. I improved again on my previous day’s result, and in fact this was my best day position-wise. My run was virtually error free, with only the long run to the beach finish proving to be morale-sapping.