Training Log Archive: Thraws

Maybe I should have done the sprint race first. I was one of the early starters and had to blaze a trail through head high bracken and a lot of dark green. It's a wonder I didn't lose a lens. I'm sure there were big tracks into the controls for the later starters. Having said that, I had a pretty good run apart from two 3-4 minute mistakes, the one on the penultimate leg costing me about ten places. I messed up 3 because I couldn't interpret the faint contours so ran through the light green looking for a reentrant. I found the bigger one behind, facing the wrong way, relocated on the path but was too far north, so went back for the top of the sandy slope. Numbers 5 and 8 were two of about eight reentrants approached through a mass of light green so I watched the compass really carefully and got both of them well. 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14 were textbook legs. I used the big path as an AP and read the contours well, although some familiarity with this bit of the Barossa map helped. Then I wandered off the bearing to 15 through the bracken and messed up a really easy control so all the good work was undone. Both mistakes were caused by me getting distracted.

It's five years since we were here for the PPJTR and I fancied a run on the map. The lower resolution printing made some of the crucial detail difficult to see, i.e. gaps between buildings, so I lost time at 2 because I couldn't visualise the circle snd 3 because the overprint obscured the route through the hedge. The rest of the course was fairly obvious running between buildings then looking for the kink in the building with the flag. The splitsbrowser graphs are all pretty straight lines. 15 was at the top of the stairs, and not on the corner as I'd imagined, but was pointed out to me by a couple of cadets at a bus stop. The short blue course had hardly been classic orienteering but if I rated my enjoyment of the sprint at 5 out of 10 I'd have had to give the former 8. Urban-O is a pretty poor substitute for the real thing (I think it's the absence of readable contour detail). Also, loved the way all the students at the college walk with that exaggerated and co-ordinated arm swing. Do they have to consciously stop it when they're in the real world?

Drink at the Fox with Heather, Andy, Ali et al. Home in the dark.

Thorney Island is usually out of bounds so this was a good opportunity to visit a little-seen area. As the map memory looked the most interesting exercise, and probably the most useful, I did it first. Despite running through a ditch on the way to 2 I was going well and taking it easy. But I picked up speed near the end of the memory section and failed to notice that 9 had legs for 10 and 11. So when I got to 10 there were no map segments. I thought someone had taken them and jogged back to the start (1.5 km) to report it. Doh! I never got to do the second half of the course and was actually a minute ahead of the eventual leader when I stopped.

Did the 'corridor' after the frustration of the map memory because it was next longest and I wanted a proper run. In fact, it wasn't a corridor exercise as the whole map was shown and the navigation was very easy (red standard). Many of the controls was the same as the 'memory' so I got round this pretty quickly and ended with the fastest time by about five minutes.

This was the best exercise, a sprint/urban race but on a 1:10,000 map. So it didn't look very far but was actually quite long for a race of this sort. My big right toe was hurting after exercise two, so I wasn't sure how this would go. In the event I never noticed it once I started running. My technique was to try and match the big black squares on the map with the buildings on the ground, and it worked. My routes, APs and flow were all fine and I didn't really have reason to be displeased with anything. Army sprints and me just seem to get on.

Fancied doing something after a quiet day, so drove to club night for my first taste of street-O. This started with a path run to a micro course between about 12 trees. I lost a few places here as I kept overshooting and even had to unfold the map a couple of times to check codes. After about 4 minutes we were out on the street course, and I just went for the nearest control, hoping to get them all. Couldn't get into the scale, as road junctions wouldn't seem to come up, and quickly realised that although hills weren't mapped they were certainly there! So I did the eastern half clockwise, leaving two which were long out and back legs, then back past the start to the flatter bit. I had roughly planned the western half, clockwise, by this time. With an eye on the watch, I left one more near the top of the hill, and had four easy controls on the way to the finish, plus an optional extra. I went for this, but lost time when I overshot the footpath, so had to leave one of the easy ones. Got 18/22 and my Garmin (edge of piece of paper) says I ran 10.6 km. (I'll find the OS map and work out the considerable climb.) I'd left 5 mins 30 secs for the 1.3 km sprint race, and might have done it too, but some of the SI units were in odd places and I wasted time searching for them (no flags). I was just over a minute late so had my street score reduced by two. Lots of people had scored 15, so I guess they just ignord the eastern set of controls. Really enjoyable little event and good workout.

There is the possibility of mistakes at Horsham, but we've been here so many times now I know where the tricky bits are. Even so, go the wrong way round a tennis court here, or get the wrong side of a hedge, and lose four or five places. I took time to fold, thumb and plan to 1 and was OK to 7. I couldn't see the hill on the map near 8 so ran over rather than round it, but spiked 9 to 11. At 12 I couldn't see the tree, which seemed too near the fence, and lost 20 secs trying to relocate. And I couldn't plan ahead for 18 as it was on the other side of the map (although the rather pointless circuit of the pond meant I should probably have turned over earlier). Consequently I was way too far right leaving 17 and probably lost about 10 secs. I was alright to 22 but couldn't see the hedge on the map in front of 23 and punched a control on the path bend instead. I was checking the code on the way to 24 and it 'seemed' wrong, but I couldn't remember what I had seen so I went back. It was wrong so I guessed the control was behind the hedge, in the garden, and ran in. Lost 45 secs and about five places here. 24 was similar, but I was wised up this time, then I missed the exit route southwards and instead ran out and round (15 secs). Costly mistakes caused by trying to a) catch and b) overtake people.

Really enjoyed this, although the mass start element was somewhat compromised by the fact we had to take it in turns to punch the start. As I was first off I was obliged to try and stay ahead and I think the hard running led me to make four mistakes (not including the mispunch on the last control). JC was out of sight on the way to 1 but I was next into the first butterfly and round the first loop (to 5) before the pack arrived at 2. Alex got ahead of me at 8 and led the way to 9. I thought he'd overshot the right bush but couldn't see a flag so ran into the next clump behind him. By the time I realised (minute lost), we'd been caught by four others but I got ahead up the hill to 10. I was clean but only just ahead to 16, then got two parallel paths confused and slightly missed the tree. My plan for 18 worked but the flag was hidden in the shrub so I lost another minute and we were four again. I got ahead on the long leg to 20 and was relieved to spike the control but then, inexplicably, turned right up the hill when I had already worked out my exit strategy was left and down. It was either me unfolding the map to check the code or being too hasty to get away, but I lost another 30 secs and the group dropped me. Then I missed 23 because I couldn't see the earthbank under the overprint. And to cap things off I went back to 25 after 26 instead of 27 (both depressions). As I'd been to 21/24/27 twice already I didn't check the compass. But the head-to-head racing on a fast area was great fun and I was reminded that if I'm going too fast to do simple things like folding, thumbing, planning ahead and checking bearings then I need to slow down.

Lu's ankle hurt too much to run so we cycled up the hill to Goodwood and freewheeled back down. Southerly breeze meant I made it up on the middle ring.

This was my first experience of a city race and I was looking forward to it. I entered the men's open class, thinking it would be fairly straightforward, but hadn't bargained for the extent to which running hard and thinking hard at the same time take it out of you. I did enjoy it, but in spite of everything I've read about shoppers, tourists and so on not being a distraction I found the presence of so many 'normal' people immensely off-putting. I couldn't stop myself thinking how annoying I must be as I ran up behind small groups, brushed past children, or jumped out in front of cars to get round buggies and whatnot. Basically I felt like the sort of idiot that rides a bike on a pavement. This isn't as good as running through forests or over hills, but I'd do it again. As training.
After leaving the park we had a long uphill leg to 3, which didn't seem to me to offer any route choice, though I had some pointed out to me afterwards. As this was the start I just went for it. I haven't been able to fiind any route choice errors now I've had a chance to study the map at leisure, even where two close together controls required you to work out a devious way of linking them. But I lost 3 and a half minutes at 8, the fence-wall junction near the castle, and think it's worth analysing what went wrong. Sprint/urban races require mostly 'map to ground' running, so you think, for example, 'go round first building to left then round second building to right and look for second alley on left', and this was going fine. But there was so much detail in and near the circle at 8 I could visualise nothing, and I reverted to 'ground to map'. I could see a hill with helter-skelter sort of paths going up it and figured I needed those. So I passed the pond and turned left behind the wall. To be faced by a temporary plastic fence which looked designed to deter me. I can see now that the path, which would have been perfect, has a pink OOB screen on it which restricted access to the top of the hill to the north-east approach, but I couldn't see this at the time. I just thought, in haste, find another way. I ran right round the bottom of the hill (OK), having decided the upper parts of it were off limits and the control must be on one of the many lower walls. Then turned right at the crossing (not OK) and out the garden, along the wall (no control obs), through another gate, where I found a wall with a flag but the wrong code, and tried to relocate. The hill (and control) was clearly too far away by now so I just tried another path, which was blocked with a fence, then another, which just happened to be the one providing access to the castle. I suppose I should have stopped running when I lost map contact, and treated the leg as the maze it was.
I started to feel tired at 11 (after about 28 mins) and found planning ahead really difficult because of the need to fold the map. I was losing time by 22 because of doing one leg at a time (no exit strategy) and made tiny errors (another minute and a half) at 23, 24, 25 and 28. Finished about 10 mins behind the leader but in top half of field (fifth old man, I think). It was boiling hot.

In the end, it took me almost 3 hours to put all 22 controls out. I fretted over 86 and put it as high as I could, I double-checked 88, and I couldn't use n. side of 85 because of all the holly. I put 76 about 3 metres from where it should have been, but only the mapper noticed, and couldn't get 84, 74, 72 and 70 (yellow course path junctions) in the ground because it was so hard. The only complaint was with 71. It was on the veg boundary, but the map wasn't good here and I could probs have got away with using 72 here on the long green as I was only getting runners from one bit of forest to the other, anyway. In the end the times were quite long, but I had set out to provide as technical a challenge as possible, and people seem to have enjoyed it. Especially good to see runners on the yellow course, and appreciating it! I had no offers of help whatsoever, so ran round and collected five yellow controls once everyone was back, then ran out for ten northern ones while Les had to get the seven eastern ones as he needed to take them away. Took down signs about 9.15.
I've always wanted to plan courses using landform features on Slindon map and think I came up with some good ones. No one seemed to mind the bracken, or the fact they were out for over an hour, one little bit. And I can use OCAD now, as well.

To Bognor to collect ticket for Lucy's ballet on Friday.

Quick walk round control sites for Slindon to see how long it would take to put controls out on Thursday. Just over an hour, I should think.

Circular stroll with Phil and Shelagh from Compton via the church at Up Marden.

New area, new map and new mapper, but it was all good. I was glad of the hill, though, as without it there might not have been the same challenge. Got straight into the map for 1 and 2 but took wrong path to 3 (though knew I had, 10 secs) and overshot 4 (30secs). Got slightly distracted leaving 10 and stopped to check code on rootstock on way to 11. Played safe rather than gamble with hedges on way to 12 (and 16 and 20 and 22) and ran hard in the open. Completely missed the gap in the fence leaving 19 and got paths confused near 20 (30 secs?), then was forced round on paths for 22 (20secs). Was delighted to find the micro-paths for 23 to 26 were exactly as mapped. Great fun.
As the area was completely new I took my compass (don't usually for sprints) and found myself checking it repeatedly, like in a regular event. I'm sure this was a help. It removes that element of doubt about direction that sometimes creeps in when you're trying to go fast.

On the way home from Withdean I stopped at Slindon with the printed maps and went round to check control sites. At one or two (or on one or two route choices) the bracken has pretty well doubled in height in the last fortnight. Might be best to put controls at every site as the area in places is definitely more difficult than it would be in winter conditions, and people will need reassurance.

Goodwood, East Dean, Levin Down, Charlton Forest, Graffham Down, Oxen Down, Selhurst Woods, Winkins. Biting flies were a nuisance, but a badger wandered by within about three yards of me before it realised and ambled off.