BKO Concorde Chase, Barossa, near Bracknell.
My sort of area!!! Oh yes, Clive's sort of area too. Near Star Posts.....
Routegadget:
http://www.bko.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#107Foot walkable on 1st thing after 5 hours sleep.
Short Brown,8.3km 215m, 26 controls.
1st 51:53
Calf (left - knotty?) and Achilles (R) - last night's nightmare - seemed "fine" - ish.
Started and immediately felt good and happy. big error at no 7 - overshot; misread big path junction area - 2 minutes lost!!!!!!
Then flunked no 8 (too far left ) & no 9 (went in too early). At this point I had serious doubts that my lack of sleep meant that I had simply lost the ability to actually orienteer? Also, by this point, some white haired M60 was there, but heh! - I'll run him down and burn him off, right?
Ah. Colin Dickson. M60. 3rd, 54mins?
Gapped him 30 m on long path leg; did little loop to find pit, leading him straight to it - 25m of my lead gone. Put boot in - got another 30m lead. But no 13 I think was in wrong place / map was wrong. - lost 30 seconds - we punched together. I said, that's worng, oh yeah I agree he said, no question!
Up hill gapped him again, and luckily for me, that was the end of his challenge to me. He's caught me ? when I cocked up no 7?
Calf started knotting / snitching from here on in, and I was getting tired, and "wooden" Achilles was starting to bother me, but I am nothing if not determined and kept the tempo up, hitting most controls fine, passed Pete Maliphant near end, and coping (just!) with some extremely poor vegetation mapping near the end. Dragged to finish by two young BLack course faster (much faster - depressing) runners
Quite surprised to have won, but let's not forget Clive did sub 68 mins on 11.8km Black course! Jeeeez....
2 lovely compliments after: when talking to officials about no 13, one said, ah - are you Clive Hallett? ( I said I was from Bristol & was leader on the course).
.... and when one of the best ever UK M55s (IMO) says to you, he's happy to be "only" just over 2 mins down on me, that means a lot, thank you!
Nearly puking with exhaustion on way back - luckily Paul drove. straight to bed & sleep when I got in - didn't even shower.
REST need to REST REST REST ..... and do mobility to stave off this calf knotting threat and Achilles pain threat. Well done me. Now STOP.
Garmin:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1034703...Prov results:
http://race-results.info/races/20160131conc/course...Looking at splits, I was caught 2 mins at no 7 by Colin Dickson, and was well down on Andy Monro at that time, but from 15/16 - just as my calf started "snitching" - I was relentlessly faster than everyone to the end, hence winning. Gosh.
Clive ridiculous. Ridiculous.