Paul’s
Orienteering Blog
Jump to: current
Saturday 17 – Tuesday 20 February 2007
Portugal O Meeting – Sāo Pedro do Sul, north Portugal
A large group of people from
SLOW – along with dozens of other Brits – travelled out to the small town of Sāo Pedro do Sul, about 2
hours drive south-east of Porto in northern Portugal, for the annual 4-day
Portugal O Meeting (“POM”) event. This
event always attracts many of the top elites from all over Europe, at a time of
year when much of Scandinavia is still covered in snow, offering a high-quality
competition in what we hoped would be a somewhat warmer climate (in fact of
course, the weather turned out to be a combination of gales, rain, hail, sleet
and snow …).
The 4-day event
included 3 middle distance races and just the one full-length classic race, and
so I decided to run the M21E course along with a few other SLOW members, many
other top Brits, and the cream of the world’s orienteering elite. In hindsight, perhaps I was a bit out of my
depth. This wasn’t at all helped by the
fact that I had suffered from a nasty bout of flu shortly before the event with
a few days off work, and wasn’t in the best condition when I arrived.
I ended up
struggling quite badly to run over the first couple of days, 
feeling very breathless and
tired, although I did improve a bit later in the week and was at least running
reasonably well by the final day. That
still doesn’t excuse the quite appalling standard of navigation I exhibited
throughout the competition – I estimated a total of 54 minutes of navigation
time loss over the four days, which is some going considering that three of the
four courses were under 6 km long. To be fair the terrain was genuinely very
technical – the areas were generally quite small but with lots of rock and
contour detail which was sometimes hard to read despite using a 1:7500 map on
two days. Paths were very few and far
between. The terrain couldn’t really be
more removed from my comfort zone of south-east England.
Day 1 was some of
the worst weather conditions I have ever run in – things weren’t looking good
when driving up the mountain through incredibly heavy fog on the way to the
event – and the area was completely exposed open moorland on the top of the
mountain (“The Highest Day”, the event was subtitled). I resisted the very strong temptation to stay
in the car and decided to venture out into the wind and rain, only to have a
very poor run with lots of separate mistakes.
My time was over double that of 
world champion Thierry Gueorgiou, although if you take out my navigational
mistakes I would have only been 20 minutes behind…
Day 2 was on the
same terrain as the previous day, although thankfully the weather was
significantly better – even a bit of sun creeping through for a while. Today was the full long distance classic race
– although Thierry won in a time of just 61 minutes which suggests the course
was probably too short. I was very glad
of that, as after 2 hours of struggling by the moor I was just about ready to
collapse. Still feeling the effects of
my flu I’d been struggling to run, and combined with a 10-minute mistake on the
first control I wasn’t in the best frame of mind as I staggered round the
course. I completely hit the wall with
about 20 minutes, which I haven’t done orienteering for a long long time.
Surprisingly
however I managed to pick myself up in time for the night sprint race that
evening which was held around the event centre town of São
Pedro do Sul.
Unfortunately from an organisational point of view this race turned into
a bit of a farce. No start times were
allocated beforehand, and the idea was that everyone turned up and got a
punching start. After a good 30 minutes
of waiting around in a huge crowd of people for the starts to get underway it
transpired that there were no working Start SI units. In the end they just let everyone go at
around the same time, although there would be no download or results recorded. The race however was good fun on a good 
sprint map, and I was
actually running quite well – still took 23 minutes for the 3.0km course, but
it was good fun. It must have been quite
a strange sight for the locals to see hundreds of people running round the town
with enormous headlamps on!
Day 3 was a superb piece of
technical terrain, some of the most difficult stuff I have ever run on – mainly
forested terrain with very intricate rock and contour detail. Even the mighty Thierry could only manage 33
minutes for the 4.6 km course. I ran
quite well for the first 6 controls, but then made a right hash of the one long
leg on the course, losing around 8 minutes (although certain other people
managed to lose much more time on the same control). I then managed to bang my knee quite badly on
a rock half way round which slowed me down quite a bit as it spurted out blood
for the rest of the course (see the small blood stain on the picture
opposite!). I had to persuade the Portugese first-aid at the finish to let me have some kind
of bandage to cover the wound at the end.
My final time of 76 minutes for 4.6 km was my slowest minutes-per-km
recorded for many a year.
Finally day 4 was
a chasing start 
– or at least it was for
everyone within an hour of the leader Thierry.
At 135 minutes behind, I just missed out. This meant a mass start, along with around 50
other Elite runners, which turned it into a good fun race. The only problem was the queues at control
sites – I had to wait for 4 or 5 people to punch at all of the first 10
controls or so, which was quite frustrating (there were just 2 mass starts for
all classes, so quite a lot of people out there together). The area was fast runnable open terrain,
which meant there were some fairly large packs going round. I kept Simon in
sight for most of the course, until my first mistake of the day at number 24
near the end which lost me a couple of minutes.
I then made by far the most stupid mistake of the week, by running
straight from 25 to 27 without realising.
I did have a feeling when I got to 27 that I was expecting the previous
control code, but I convinced myself I couldn’t have been so stupid. I blame it on the TV camera that was pointing
at number 27 which I could see a long way off – as soon as I saw that I headed
straight down for it knowing it would be my control. To make it even more frustrating, when I
finished I discovered that I would have beaten my brother Ian for the first
time in 8 years (excluding a Score event a few months ago – these “don’t count”
apparently) – only for my disqualification to rule out the victory (admittedly
I’d had a tow round in the mass start, whereas he had been in the chasing start
– but even so, this one would have counted in my opinion – if only!).
Anyway, it was
good fun to do a multi-day event at this time of year, although I would have
preferred the weather to be better and me to be fitter. Next year the event is down in the Algarve
which might be more appealing.
M21E course – (1) 5.4 km / 160 m, (2) 11.1km / 410m,
(3) 4.6km / 215m, (4) 5.4km / 180m
Result: (1) 61:08 (winner 28:55) – 165th out of 171, (2) 120:38
(winner 61:19) – 145th out of 154,
(3) 76:29 (winner 33:38) – 113rd out of
123, (4) disqualified [time 53:31] (winner 38:11)
Full results here SLOW
photo gallery Thierry
Gueorgiou’s write-up
Sunday
4 February 2007
TVOC Regional event – Wendover Woods, Buckinghamshire
Lots of people had
warned me what to expect at this event – a very steep area covered in brambles
and generally not very pleasant. Perhaps
because of these low expectations I came away pleasantly surprised having quite
enjoyed the run. Ok, the area was steep,
with just under 500m of climb, and there certainly were plenty of brambles
which you had to run through, but it was an enjoyable course with some good
route choice legs and enough variety to keep things interesting.
I did get stuck in some
horrible brambles on an uphill leg from 2-3, although I then pleased myself by
using my car as an attack point – having already located where I was parked on
the map beforehand, it turned out to be in the perfect position to lead me into
number 3. After this I generally stuck
to the paths as much as possible, and many legs offered the choice of either
up-round-down or down-round-up. The
“ups” were generally very hard work though!
I made my only
real mistake on number 12 – stupid really as it was a fairly simple control,
but I overshot on the path above the control and ran diagonally down the hill
above the control and ended up far too far south. I finally bailed out and ran
along the track below the control before climbing back up, but I had lost 4
minutes on the leg. This was a shame as
I navigated very well on the rest of the course – probably lost half a minute
on number 13 due to route choice (I went up and round, better to have gone down
and round), but nothing else at all significant.
The best leg was
17-18, which was from the south-west end of the car park to the far eastern
side of the area – the straight-line route was 1.2 km but with 75m climb. I decided to go entirely round the forest
roads, right through the assembly area and back through the start again, as I’d
had quite enough of climbing by this stage.
I’ve measured the route I took as 1.75 km with 15m climb, which I reckon
was a much better option. Hard to tell
too much from the splits, but most people I spoke to went a more direct route
(if not straight-line) and generally took longer – and Splitsbrowser gives me a
30-second ‘gain’ for this leg. I
finished the course very strongly after this, and had a decent overall result,
but was certainly quite knackered by the end.
M21L course – 10.9 km / 495 m
Result: 83:44 (winner 72:55) – 6th out of 29 Full
results here Splitsbrowser
Saturday
3 February 2007
SLOW Night event – Esher Common and Oxshott Heath,
Surrey
Night orienteering
has never really been my thing. My last
attempt had been a year ago at the British Night Championships at Hawley & Hornley where my headlamp failed half way round the
course. Other previous experiences had
included a 2½-hour epic round a 7km course in the Forest of Dean many years ago
(in a run which still earned me the dubious honour of M20 Southern Night
Champion, finishing 1st out of 1).
However with a SLOW-organised night event just 15 minutes up the road,
and a shiny new headlamp arriving in the post recently, I thought I might as
well have another go.
I quite enjoyed
the first two controls, taking it nice and steadily and hitting them fairly
well. Then my problems started, and I
just could not find the next control – a 300m leg which eventually took me 10
minutes. As it turned out I was looking
in the wrong block of forest, getting confused by the path network which seemed
to include a few unmapped and indistinct paths 
(although in hindsight I
wasn’t where I thought I was!).
After this however
I started to navigate really well and seemed to finally get the hang of how to
navigate at night. I was taking things
very steadily going slower than usual, using the paths as much as possible, and
really slowing down near control sites, which seemed to pay off. I began to realise that the best features to
rely on at night are the contours – much easier to make out than vegetation or
even paths.
Unfortunately I
got a bit too complacent near the end, and having navigated really well from
controls 4-11 I then made a hash of two of the last three controls. Number 12 I was in the right block of forest,
but got stuck in lots of brambles hunting around for the control for ages. The next control was much worse,
as I again got confused by the paths and kept convincing myself I was in a
different place to where I actually was.
I eventually relocated off the large open area east of the control.
My final time of
62 minutes was pretty poor, and by my reckoning those three legs cost me around
20 minutes – around 30% of total time!
Needless to say, I am not bothering with this year’s British Night
Championships in East Anglia next weekend.
Navy course – 5.5 km / 85 m
Result: 62:18 (winner 30:48) – 19th out of 30 Full results
here Splitsbrowser RouteGadget
Sunday
28 January 2007
BKO/BAOC Regional event – Hawley & Hornley,
Hampshire
Much like last
week’s Regional event, Hawley & Hornley is one of
the fastest areas in the south, and the M21L course was again (rightly) in
excess of 13 km. The area is fairly flat
throughout with just a few small slopes, and is a mixture of heather-infested
open heathland and path-infested runnable forest. The course had 31 controls, which must be one
of the most I have ever encountered, but there was still room for four legs of
over 900m in length.
I made an annoying 2½-minute
error at number 5, caused by poor compass work which resulted in me drifting
off-line, and then mixing up paths on the map and looking for the control in
the wrong block of forest. When I
finally relocated and found the control, Clive Hallett
appeared just behind me having caught up 5 minutes – I had fully expected to be
caught by Clive at some point, but it was disappointing to be only 16 minutes
into my run. I managed to stay ahead of
him on the next three short legs, until he overtook me at number 8. 8-9 was essentially a 1 km path run, at which
point I was easily passed – I just can’t run at that speed. Clive went on to win the course, in a very
fast time of 67 minutes (about 5 minute km’s). I did manage to keep him in sight until
number 15 though, and my pace between controls 8-15 had certainly been helped
along. I probably paid for this a bit
later on though as I started to feel tired towards the middle of the course,
although I did pick up again for the last 2-3 km – helped by gradually chasing
down and eventually passing clubmate Mark Vyvyan-Robinson and accompanying dog (who successfully
followed me slightly ahead of Mark into control 27 – very well-trained!).
Overall I was
fairly pleased with the run – apart from the early mistake, I only had one
other significant error (1½ minutes at number 23, looking for the control in an
unmapped ditch), and a few other minor blips (e.g. 20-21, opposite). My result was generally a bit better than
previous weeks – good to finally beat Matthias again for the first time in a
very long time! An enjoyable event, with
a very good event centre at the Gibraltar Army barracks.
M21L course – 13.3 km / 220 m
Result: 80:47 (winner 67:31) – 14th out of 37 Full
results here Splitsbrowser
Saturday
27 January 2007
SN Local event – Witley Common, Surrey
Southern Navigators put on a
very well-attended series of Junior League events, with around one event each
month on a Saturday morning. We people who
are too old for school now are also very welcome to come along, with the
longest course usually being the ‘Light Blue’ (which actually seem to be more like Green courses, typically around 4-5
km). I hadn’t been to one of these
events for a long time, but Witley Common was only a 15-minute drive away, and
was also an area I had never run on – quite a rare thing for me in the
south-east!
It was a nice
little area, mainly runnable woodland with a few small bits of open, and some
interesting earthwork features. Although the navigation was fairly
straightforward, it was very good orienteering practice with lots of short legs
to keep things interesting.
I was a few
minutes behind the leaders, which was mainly down to running speed – you have
to be going pretty fast to get a good result on a short race like this. I’d like to claim I was saving myself a bit
for tomorrow’s 13 km epic… (ok, actually maybe I’m
just a bit slower than those ahead of me!)
Light Blue course – 5.2 km / 50 m
Result: 31:20 (winner 28:47) – 5th out of 49 Full results
here Splitsbrowser
Sunday
21 January 2007
HH Regional event – Ashridge, Hertfordshire
I was looking
forward to this event, as I remembered Ashridge as
being a great area from my previous visit in 2004 – a very fast runnable forest
throughout, and generally very flat apart from a steep scarp slope which runs
right along the western side of the area.
Should be my kind of forest! The
wood was indeed as runnable as I had remembered, although some of the paths
were a bit mud-soaked and waterlogged, due to the recent heavy rain, which
meant that running off the paths was often quicker than staying on them – it
was really nice today to be able to run in a forest where going straight was
almost always the fastest route. Unfortunately
I had a few problems in managing to run straight, but it was still a very
enjoyable race on what must be one of the fastest forested areas I have run
on. Nick Barrable
won the course in
5 minute km’s, which is pretty impressive going.
My mistake count today was
very high (Splitsbrowser tells me around 8 minutes in total, which sounds about
right) – nearly 10% of total running time which isn’t really very good! I did find it difficult at times navigating
in a forest which was so featureless in general (apart from the scarp slope) –
I found that fine navigation was quite tricky at times with so little on the
map. 20 of the 28 controls were of the
“below ground level” type (ie pits, depressions,
re-entrants, and gullies) which really meant you had to navigate straight to
the feature to find them. In hindsight I
was probably running too fast for my own good at times, and not concentrating
hard enough on the navigation. Some more
accurate compass bearings would certainly have been helpful at times, as some
of my routes veered wildly off the straight line for no apparent reason that I
could fathom – my rough compass work clearly isn’t up to scratch. I’m wondering if I should try switching to a
thumb compass again… Any other
suggestions welcome!
Check out the Routegadget link below for the full feeble route – number
26 is particularly embarrassing, and it was especially annoying to lose 5
minutes here, 12.5km into the 13.0km course!
I’m not sure the route drawn here is exactly what I did, but it’s along
those lines… (and well done for Happy Herts for getting Routegadget
setting up – we’re going to try to have a go getting it onto Sloweb before too long).
Next week I really will be trying my utmost to have a clean run!
M21L course – 13.0 km / 205 m
Result: 84:09 (winner 65:21) – 16th out of 34 Full results
here Splitsbrowser Routegadget
Sunday
14 January 2007
GO Regional event – Waggoners Wells, Hampshire
A lovely day for
orienteering, sunny and fairly warm for January, and it was great to be finally
doing my first M21L regional event course since last summer. Before the run I treated myself to a new pair
of O-shoes, and went for something a bit different to what I had ever used
before, getting some Adidas
Swoops (perhaps more typically used for fell running), as recommended to me
by both Ian and my Dad when home over Christmas. I have to say they were superb today, I have never had a pair of orienteering shoes feel so
comfortable on their first outing.
Generally the area
today was quite nice, and the bits of white forest were very pleasant. The course was pretty good with some
interesting longer legs offering a bit of route choice. We had been warned
about the extensive gorse on the area (“chain mail recommended if you attempt
to go straight through any of it!” I had been told by Alastair
the organiser), but apart from a couple of legs early on we were mainly kept
out of it.
Leg 4-5 was 1.3 km, and I
went fairly straight (as did most people I spoke to), although this was one leg
I did get stuck in the gorse, hunting around for a short while for a large
depression in the midst of a gorsefield and ending up
fighting my way back through some of it (a bit which was admittedly marked as
fight on the map).
My navigation was
going well in the first half of the course, and I’d only lost about a minute up
to number 10 (about half-way through) – Splitsbrowser shows I was in 3rd place
at this point. Then it started to go wrong,
with a bad loss of concentration on the way to 11, where I failed to notice I
was running east on a path through rough open, instead of south through forest,
resulting in a long detour round. On the
1km leg from 12-13 I took the northern path option, which appears to have cost
me around 30 seconds, as I was running ok (south was obviously better). I went on to make two more blunders – on
number 16 I overshot and ended up climbing back into it. Straight after this I made a complete hash of
17, again a very bad loss of concentration meant I thought I’d crossed over the
western-most of the “wells” on the map, instead of the next one along, and so I
ended up looking for my control about 250m away before realising my error.
In total just over
5 minutes of time loss, which is disappointing. However I was very pleased with the way I was
running, and the splits show that my speed on the majority of legs was
comparable with everyone ahead of me apart from Alan Velecky
(who won by over 5 minutes). So the fitness does seem to be pretty much back –
just need to work a bit on the concentration!
M21L course – 10.9 km / 335 m
Result: 79:49 (winner 70:03) – 7th out of 26 Full
results here Splitsbrowser
Tuesday
9 January 2007
SLOW Street event – Kensington/Notting Hill, west London
I help to
co-ordinate a series of street orienteering events for SLOW, which generally
take place on the second Tuesday of every month between September and
April. These events provide good
orienteering training, particularly for short races where you have to navigate
on essentially fairly easy areas but at a higher speed than in a forest. They are also always really good social
events, and definitely preferable to an hours training run around the
streets. The format of the races is a
60-minute score event, and you are given a clue sheet with questions to answer
at each control point (can’t easily go hanging controls around the streets of
London) – generally taking things from signposts or other landmarks.
This event was right in the
middle of west London, hosted by Phil Marsland from
his house which is very close to Notting Hill Gate tube station. The location of the area meant that the
control clues which a bit more interesting than usual, with several of London’s
famous blue plaques to visit – we had controls on the former houses of T.S.
Eliot and Agatha Christie amongst others, as well as
a control on the Royal Albert Hall (see map extract).
I actually didn’t
make it into Notting Hill at all myself and stayed exclusively in the southern
half of the map in Kensington. When
measuring the route afterwards, I only ran 10.8km, compared to 11.9km at the
December event, so I must have been doing something wrong (I didn’t feel like I
was running particularly slower). I
didn’t plan the best route, and managed to waste several minutes looking for
the answers to clues once I had reached roughly the right location (some of
those blue plaques were hard to find, often appearing high up on
buildings!). This is a common challenge
in street-O however – one of the skills is often being able to quickly find the
answer when you get to the right place, which does improve with practice. Hope to do better next month!
Street score course – 60-minute time limit
Result: 240 points (winner 320) – 4th out of 32 Full results here
Sunday
7 January 2007
SAX District event – Challock, Kent
I decided to go to
the Saxons event today rather than the SOC one in the New Forest, which was
roughly the same travelling distance away, to at least try orienteering on a
new area (and also having been invited to lunch at Sarah CC’s new house just
down the road). Saxons areas sometimes
have a reputation for being a bit grotty, but this one wasn’t too bad – not too
many 
brambles to run through,
although there was a fair bit of green on the map.
I was running very well
today and feel like my fitness is pretty much back to my pre-injury level which
is very pleasing – at least for a course of this length (it remains to be seen
how I will cope with the 11-12km M21L courses over the next month.
I still managed to
lose around 3 minutes in mistakes on the course, which was a bit disappointing
– one of my aims for this year is to try to keep mistakes down to a maximum of
5% of total course time (although today was only just over that, at 6%). My main problems were at number 18, running
on a path which wasn’t on the map and ending up too far north, and then the
very last control where I didn’t read the map carefully enough (must keep
concentrating to the end).
Still, I was very
pleased to record only my 2nd ever win on a Brown course (the previous one was
also at a Saxons event, at Igtham last year – perhaps
I should come down to Kent more often), although admittedly there weren’t many
people to compete against, with only 5 M21’s on the entire Brown course. Next week will provide a much sterner test at
the Guildford Regional event.
Brown course – 7.7 km / 170 m
Result: 53:48 – 1st out of 27
Full
results here Splitsbrowser Routegadget
Monday
1 January 2007
BKO/BADO Score event – Greenham Common, Berkshire
A new year, which I start full of enthusiasm
for orienteering again! – hence me starting to write
this ‘blog’ to attempt to chronicle my orienteering
over the coming year. After spending
over 3 months out injured in the autumn, it feels good to finally be up and
running again and getting somewhere back towards my pre-injury level of
fitness. I did a bit of training whilst
back with the family in Romsey over Christmas,
including running the M21L November Classic course which I had missed, in a
vaguely respectable time. I even got
persuaded out of the 
house by Ian for a Christmas Day run around Romsey!
So, for the first event of the new year I managed to drag myself out of bed and up to the
former Military base at Greenham Common near Newbury.
I was keen to run here having missed the Compass Sport Cup final in October due
to injury. Today’s race was a 1-hour score event only using the western part of
the area, so a much smaller map than the CS Cup event, and it was pretty clear
when seeing the map that I should be able to complete all controls within the
hour.
With no time to plan beforehand, you had to make
a snap decision when picking up the map which way to go, and I managed to
select a particularly bad route choice early on. So much so that the control I had visited
third, number 60, I then decided to go back to after only 2 more controls in
between. Brain not yet recovered from
the night before… I then proceeded to
make some almost equally bad route choice decisions in picking up all the
controls in the southern area, before finally looping round the west and north
of the area where route choice was a lot more straightforward. It turns out that the leading pack had all
gone the opposite way round to me – I passed them all coming the opposite
direction after about 25 minutes – and in hindsight I should have gone the
other way round to give me more time to plan a route for the trickier
section. I would have been further
behind if the leaders hadn’t all initially missed the bonus ‘Roaming Santa’
control and had to spend time looking for him at the end – I had managed to
pass him twice en route (although unlike control number 60 I decided to only
‘punch’ him the once).
Still, a fun event and an
enjoyable start to the orienteering year.
Score
course – 60-minute time limit
Result: 53:47 (winner 49:27) – joint 4th out of 121 Full
results here