Paul’s
Orienteering Blog
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Tuesday 11 December 2007
SLOW Street-O – Pimlico, south-west London
Another Street-O
in a fairly central London area, this map covered the areas of Pimlico and
Belgravia, with Victoria station in the centre of the map and the walls of
Buckingham Palace on the northern side.
The south-western part of the map overlapped to some extent the map of
Battersea & Chelsea used for the September event (although this time’s map
seems to have more roads on it!).
My route seemed to be pretty
good, in terms of picking up the high scoring controls. I chose a route covering all the central and
western area of the map, missing out the 10 controls on the eastern part of the
area, but collecting 19 of the 23 remaining controls, missing a few of the low
scorers. My route back to the finish worked
fairly well, and I finished with about 1 minute to spare for the second
street-O running – distance judgement is improving!
I covered a total
of 11.2km in the 59 minutes, which is less than the previous two street-O’s,
but I achieved my best position of the series by finishing in equal second
place – although admittedly this would probably have been lower if Ed and
Matthias had been there. Patrick Saile
(an Australian who has recently moved to London), who finished joint second
with me, took a completely different route and covered 12.0km – so although I
was running slower at least my route choice made up for it for once!
After finishing
9th at the first street-O of the season in September, my positions since then
have been 5th, then 4th, then 3rd, and now 2nd.
I doubt that I will be able to complete the pattern at the January event
though!
Street score race – 60-minute time limit
Result: 520 points (winner 600) – joint 2nd out of 41 Full results here
Thursday
29 November 2007
LOK Street-O – London’s West End
Outside of the
usual SLOW Street-O series, in recent years LOK have organised an annual
street-O race, which this year took place in the heart of the west end of
London. The start and finish was located
in Birkbeck College (part of the University of London), thanks to event
organiser David Rosen, and the event itself covered the central west London
areas of Bloomsbury, Holborn, Covent Garden, Soho and Fitzrovia.
Never before have I seen so
many streets so close together on a street-O map, despite the usual 1:10,000
scale. There are so many small roads and
alleyways in this part of London, which made navigation quite challenging at
times to keep in touch with the map. It
did help that the map was excellent, and it was also impressive to see this
produced on glossy waterproof paper (which was also suitable for writing the
answers straight onto the back of it).
Another good touch on the map was a little tiny brown dot in the centre
of each circle to pinpoint exactly where the answer to each control clue point
was to be found (i.e. which side of the road etc). This meant that it was always very easy to
find the control point straight away every time, which is not always the case
in street-O’s.
Half way through
the race (between controls 10 and 17 on the map extract) the street became very
crowded with pedestrians, and I suddenly realised I was running along Oxford
Street! Being a Thursday night, less
than a month before Christmas, there were a lot of late-night shoppers around,
which made dodging between pedestrians quite tricky on this stretch. Indeed I have never run along quite so many
busy streets on a street-O race before, and it was definitely a case of safety
first in a lot of places while trying to find safe ways to cross the busy
roads.
Having said that
it was certainly a very enjoyable race, exploring some parts of the West End
that I have never been to before, and I was pleased with my run – collecting 23
of the 30 controls (all worth 10 points) and getting back to base with less
than a minute to spare, I was pleased to record a good 3rd place finish. Shame that this run didn’t count for the SLOW
annual series!
Street score race – 60-minute time limit
Result: 230 points (winner 273) – 3rd out of 46 Full
results here
Sunday
25 November 2007
SLOW “OK Nuts Trophy” Regional Event – The Devil’s Punchbowl, Surrey
For the second
week running this was an area which I had never run at before, despite it’s
proximity to where I have orienteered for most of my life. Looking at the OK Nuts history, it seems this
was only the 2nd time that the Devil’s Punchbowl has been used for the OK Nuts
since 1985 (apparently obtaining land permission is often quite difficult), so
it is an 
area which is not used very
often.
It’s certainly a
physical area, with a contour-covered map and a course which had 5% climb
(which I think is the recommended maximum for any orienteering race). The area was generally quite runnable
underfoot though, apart from some tough rough open bits with heather and gorse,
and I generally managed to keep running quite well although did struggle on
quite a few of the climbs. The splits
show that I lost about 30 seconds on leg 14-15 which was purely down to me
slowly staggering up the large hill (50m of climb on that leg).
My navigation
today was generally quite good, and I only lost around 2 minutes due to
mistakes (about 3% of total time) – mainly a 1-minute error at number 21 when I
ended up back at number 16 (which was fairly close by, and was a very useful
relocation feature).
I was pretty
pleased with the result overall, as hilly areas aren’t really my speciality,
and I was pleased to still be running fairly strongly at the end of the course.
M21L course – 9.3 km / 460 m
Result: 74:03 (winner 60:25) – 12th out of 28 Full results here SplitsBrowser RouteGadget
Sunday
18 November 2007
CHIG Regional Event – Epping Forest North West, Essex
I had never run in Epping
Forest before, so it was good to compete in a long race on a new area, which I
don’t often get the chance to do in the south-east, even if it did mean
trekking round the whole of the M25. It
was a bitterly cold day, but an enjoyable race in an interesting forest.
The forest was
generally fairly flat and runnable, which I always like, but I found navigation
quite tricky at times as the area was very vague in places. The vegetation could not be relied on for any
kind of navigation, and nor could many of the paths which were often marked as
indistinct. The best tactic seemed to be
accurate compass work, as it was hard to stay in map contact through a number
of areas which had very little detail, and the straight route usually seemed to
be the best.
I caught up 3 minutes
on David Abrams from Guildford after about 15 minutes, and we then proceeded to
race round the rest of the course together, with the lead alternating a number
of times when we chose slightly different routes. This definitely helped my running speed,
which I felt was fairly good throughout, and he certainly pushed me to run
harder along a number of the easier running sections. However navigationally we both put each other
off a few times, and lost of bit of time at a few controls – mainly two silly
2-minute errors at both number 20 (looking for the flag about 100m too far
north of the control) and number 23 (too far east). Other than those the run was generally fairly
clean, with a few other small errors, so I probably lost around 6 minutes in
total. The result wasn’t too bad
overall, at only 10 minutes behind the winner, but would have been very much
better if I could have avoided the time loss – this was almost entirely in the
final third of the course, which was a bit disappointing.
M21L course – 11.6 km / 160 m
Result: 77:43 (winner 67:45) – 6th out of 18 Full results here SplitsBrowser
Tuesday
13 November 2007
SLOW Street-O – Wimbledon, south-west London
This month’s
Street-O was held in the north Wimbledon area, stretching between the greyhound
racing stadium in the north-east of the map, to the All-England Club in the
north-west, and central Wimbledon at the south.
My route tonight
turned out to not be the best option, and I did quite a few fairly long legs
early on to get some of higher-scoring controls on the northern side of the
map. It is always tempting in these
Street-O’s to focus almost exclusively on the 30 and 40 point controls, and
ignore the majority of 10 and 20 pointers.
This tactic often works fairly well, but tonight Don had planned it so
that a few of the 40-pointers were probably too far away, and too isolated from
other controls, to make it worthwhile visiting them, and this ultimately cost
me. I did at the last minute decide
against no 42 in the north-west of the area (down by the Wimbledon tennis
complex), as it was just too far and too hilly to be worthwhile, which was a
very good decision.
But I left myself with too
much to do in the second half of the run, and after about 45 minutes had to
make a decision of whether to head straight back for home, perhaps picking up a
few low-scoring controls on the way, or whether to go for a much longer route
with some higher-scoring controls. I
chose the latter option, in the full knowledge that this would result in my
being late, but hoped that the extra points gained would outweigh the time
penalty. As it turned out, this extended
route gained me an extra 120 points but cost me 100 as I was just under 5
minutes late back – the shorter option would definitely have been better. Still, I was nowhere near Matthias who scored
40 points more than me and got round 4 minutes quicker.
Street score race – 60-minute time limit
Result: 410 points (winner 530) – 4th out of 34 Full results here
Sunday
11 November 2007
NWO Regional event – West Woods, Wiltshire
Having done quite
a few events here as a junior, I remembered West Woods as a lovely runnable
forest, with barely a spot of green on the map.
Much of the forest was indeed beautiful open fast woodland, although
there were quite a few patches of brambles in areas which ripped my ankles to
shreds (should have worn long socks today!).
I’ll get my excuses in early
– having been to a stag do in Torquay the day before, and only having about 5
hours sleep, I wasn’t the best prepared for running a 13km M21 course! However, this event was very conveniently
located for me on the way home from Devon, so I got a late start and decided to
give it a go. I certainly wasn’t feeling
my best out there and felt like I was running quite a bit slower than last
week, but I was pleased to be able to keep going at a reasonable pace right
until the end, although I was quite tired when I finished.
Again I had a
pretty good run from a navigational point of view, and my only significant
mistake was very early in the course when I had problems finding a large
depression, despite being very close to it, and I wasted a few minutes hunting
around. There were several controls in
depressions like this today which were hard to spot in the forest unless you
hit the feature bang on, so you had to be careful with your direction going
into the controls. But generally the
navigation was fairly easy today, with lots of paths and good attack
points.
There wasn’t much
route choice for most of the course, although there was a good 2 km leg near the
end. I chose a fairly straight route for
this as the forest was so runnable, although it did mean climbing a few hills
which could have been avoided, so I’m not sure if that was the best route, but
Splitsbrowser suggest I didn’t gain or lose any time on the leg so it was
probably ok. There were a few other
small bits of time loss here and there, but nothing major, so generally it was
a fairly pleasing run all things considered.
M21L course – 13.3 km / 330 m
Result: 85:28 (winner 71:07) – 11th out of 29 Full results
here SplitsBrowser
Sunday
4 November 2007
SOC “November Classic” Regional event – Highland Water, Hampshire
Just down the road
from yesterday’s event was the November Classic 2007-style, complete with a
full colour map and electronic punching.
Checking my old results, I have done 14 of the 40 November Classics (or
15 if you count yesterday…) – though to be fair I didn’t have much chance of
doing the first 20 or so. This area
wasn’t as nice as the one used yesterday, but I still loved it, as I do all
areas in the New Forest – it feels like my home terrain, having done so many
events down here as a junior.
I could tell from early in
the course that I was going to have a good run, as I felt like I was running
really strongly from the start. There
was quite a lot of track running in the early part of the course (though not as
bad as the first leg on course 3, which consisted of a 2km run round forest
roads). This suited me fine though, and
I was consistently finding the controls without problem and felt full of
confidence. By half way round the course
(9-10) I caught sight of Ben Chesters and Tony Burton some way ahead of me, who
had started 2 and 4 minutes before me respectively. It took me 20 minutes to finally catch them
up (from 17-18), having gradually chased them down over the open legs in the
north of the area (pictured).
We all helped push
each other round the final section of the course, and I was very pleased with
my final time of 73 minutes – just 8 minutes behind the winner. What was most pleasing today was that I had
an almost perfectly mistake-free again, for the second time in a month (after
the CS Cup final), which always helps to improve my result substantially!
This was
definitely my best result of the year – perhaps a few weeks rest from running
and recovery after being ill has helped to re-charge me. Hope that I can keep this up for a bit
longer!
M21L course – 12.5 km / 305 m
Result: 73:47 (winner 65:46) – 14th out of 67 Full
results here Splitsbrowser
Saturday
3 November 2007
SOC “1968 November Classic” – Millyford Bridge, Hampshire
Unfortunately I
had to miss the OMM last weekend having gone down with a nasty flu bug the week
before which kept me off work for most of the week. This was very disappointing to miss,
especially as I’d been doing a few long training runs in preparation and was
really looking forward to the event after doing well at the LAMM earlier in the
year. However, given all the weather
reports I have heard, particularly from the overnight camp, perhaps this wasn’t
too bad an event to miss…
By this weekend I
felt back to normal, and so went down to the double-header in the New Forest as
planned, staying at my parents house just down the road (they were organising
today’s event). This event was like
nothing I have ever done before – orienteering the way it used to be, long
before the days of electronic punching and even colour maps. The following day was the 40th November
Classic event, and to celebrate this SOC decided to put on a replica of the
original event held in 1968. Di Smith
had tracked down copies of all the original courses, and so pretty much everything
was designed to be as it was at the original event – exactly the same 4
courses, master-maps with pin punching, with maps which were black & white
photocopies of 1:25,000 OS map. In the
interests of fairness we used the current OS map rather than the 1968 original
(I saw the original copies, and it would have been almost impossible in places
where things had changed!).
So with some
interpretation I set out on the original A course, 10.5km long, with only the
black and white map to help me round. I
show below the map I used for the event (1:25,000), as well as how this
translates onto the current orienteering map (1:15,000) which I only looked at
afterwards.
The lack of any
fine detail was what made it particularly difficult. I could generally get to roughly the right
area, but finding the controls was challenging.
We had the original control description sheet, which set out control
sites which often were not actually on the map.
Number 13 for example was “a depression” – no depression on the OS map
of course! It was also quite difficult
to navigate without any vegetation on the map (it was even impossible to tell
the difference between open and forest) – and meant legs like 13-14 were quite
tough going through lots of green forest.
I also ran through a few “uncrossable marshes” without realising (2-3,
5-6) – it was very wet in places!
The most useful
features on the maps were actually the streams (the solid wiggly lines on the
map), which were very useful navigational ends, as well as the contours – there
wasn’t much else to go on. Some paths on
the OS map were useful, but there were so many which weren’t mapped that I
found it unreliable to use them.
However this all
added to the challenge of what was a very enjoyable event. I spent a very long time looking for a few of
the controls (particularly 4, 6 and 10), but was determined to complete the
course, and perseverance always paid dividends in the end. Finding every control became a mini success,
I was elated every time I found a flag, and it was more satisfying than ever
for the controls which I found quickly (I was very pleased to spike number
12). There was lots of camaraderie in
the forest, with all the hunting for flags, and I was certainly helped into a
few controls by other competitors and repaid the favour a number of times as
well.
I finally finished
with a time of 1 hour 51 minutes, which put me 7th on the day out of just 14
who attempted the A course (although the B and C courses had many more people
competing). My time would have put me
8th on the original results out of 68 competitors (times ranged from 1 hour 18
minutes to 5 hours 10 minutes – 2½ hours would have put you in the top half!) –
although everyone in those days would have been novices at orienteering.
It was a very
enjoyable event, although I can certainly say I’m glad times have moved on –
I’m not sure I’d enjoy it as much if the maps were still like that every week!
A course – 10.5 km
Result: 111:39 (winner 69:17) – 7th out of 14 Full
results here