Training Log Archive: Keith

Mallards PIke
Arguably the most fun I've had Orienteering this year. In a "hare & hounds" type exercise we went off Agmen, Bown, Birtwistle, 1 min apart.
Pushed through the first ones, nervous that Mark was going to catch me by #2 with some long opening legs. Kept clear to four where I heard some noise behind me. at #5 with Duncan (too my suprise) and Mark. We proceeded all take slightly different routes to #6, were upon arrival i found them running around like headless chickens due to the forest streching further south then mapped. Back toghether with a bit of argy bargy. had i been a bit closer at #7 i would've gone round the bottom, lost sight of them on the way to #9. Had a few issues at #10 trying to work out what was going on with the contours, further inspection of the map shows that what I thought was down was mapped as up, but it made more sense if the up was down, rather than the down being up. Thought I'd picked up the ridge to #11 in the "green" followed it down, only to find no control and beladtedly released i was on the bank to the west. opps. Then after seeing the "walk" was easily run, went up the hill to 12, near the top there was some slow stuff, and then had to go a long way down to #12, which desipte being mapped 10 -> 15 m above the open, was more like 3-> 5 m... meaning going over the top was a really poor route ( maybe they couldn't fit enough contuour lines in), but not to worry looking at the splits lots of people did it. Despite having run on mallards pike countless times, I'd never been in this little bit, and as always with FoD it was quite funky. Went to right of hill to #13 rather than the better over the top route. Bit slow to 16 as was on runnable earthbank which then became unrunnable persisted for a bit then bailed out onto the track near the end.

Fun times. Good race pressure training. Forest beautiful and clean.

WUD