Paul’s
Orienteering Blog
Tuesday 24 June 2008
SLOW Trail Challenge – Ham Riverside, SW London
This was my fourth race in
six days, and my third Trail Challenge race of the summer, back at the Ham
Riverside area in Kingston which I am now starting to know pretty well. Despite having used the area a number of
times before for Trail Challenges, I thought this course was very well planned
in managing to provide a different challenge to usual, with a different shaped
course to that often used in the past and some very good route choice legs
throughout the course.
I made a couple of
good route choices early on in the course (my route from 3-4 round to the east
proved to be quickest), but despite my apparent familiarity with the area, I
still chose a very stupid route from 4-5 (see RouteGadget link below) by
thinking it would be quicker to run straight across the field and then cut up
round the back of the control. The field
turned out to be much longer grass and rougher ground than I remembered, and I
lost 30 seconds to Owen on the leg (who was with me at the previous control),
never to catch him again. I then lost
time on the next leg by failing to notice that I could only cross a fence at a
particular gate, and having to slightly double back, losing another 30 seconds
or so in the process.
I spent the rest
of the race trying to chase down Ollie O’Brien and Charles Bromley-Gardner, but
not quite managing, staying an almost constant 10-20 seconds behind them for
the rest of the race. Overall I was
pretty pleased with my running for the evening, which felt much better than on
Sunday, but disappointed to lose time with a few silly route choices.
Sunday
22 June 2008
SN District event – Frith Hill, Surrey
Not much regular weekend
orienteering usually happens between June and August, so it was nice to see a
gold old-fashioned colour-coded event today less than half an hour down the
road at Frith Hill. One of the main
reasons for the lack of summer orienteering is the country is the bracken, and
there certainly was a fair bit of that today in places, although much of the
wood was still quite nice and runnable.
It was a lovely warm sunny day, and great to be out orienteering in it.
I was feeling very
stiff after yesterday’s run, and my legs didn’t seem to have much energy in
them, so I went round the Brown course at a fairly steady pace throughout. Other than losing a bit of time at number 1,
hunting for the flag in and around the control circle, I had a fairly clean run
throughout and was pretty pleased with my navigation generally. My running speed felt woefully slow at times
though, and I was struggling to keep going up the hills and through some of the
rougher bits of the forest.
My overall time of
72 minutes wasn’t particularly fast, and although I finished fairly high up the
results I was still several minutes behind people I would normally hope to be
closer to. But it was just nice to be
out in the forest on a nice Sunday in June, getting my last bit of proper
orienteering practice in before the O-Ringen.
Brown course – 9.1 km / 220m
Result: 72:16 (winner 67:06) – 5th out of 62 Full results
here
Saturday
21 June 2008
North Downs Way Relay – Vigo Village to Dunton Green, Kent
Having run the
fairly short final leg of the North Downs Way relay last year, this year I was
handed a much longer leg, around half way through the race in western
Kent. The route was advertised as being
somewhere between 14.7km and 15.8km, and my GPS measured the distance on the
day as being 15.5km – the third longest leg of the race. Unfortunately this years North Downs Way
relay only had three full teams competing, even less than last year, so the
race was a straight fight between SLOW, GO and Canterbury Harriers.
Despite my good run two days
earlier, today’s run didn’t go so well for whatever reason. I think this was mainly due to my old problem
of poor pacing – the first mile or so was all downhill, and I charged off very
quickly running the first two kilometres in 3:40 and 3:47. I then tried very hard to keep to the same
pace as Guildford’s Nick Green, who gradually ran past me, but the pace was
very quick indeed – my time after 6km was 25:50, so still an average of 4:18
per kilometre. At this point the route
turned uphill for a bit, and I was suddenly completely shattered. The Canterbury runner passed me here, and by
the top of the hill about 5 minutes later both other runners were about 100-200
metres clear (kilometre number 7 took me 7 minutes).
I never caught
them up again, and then gradually drifted out of sight. I found it pretty hard to keep going and
struggled quite a lot in the second half of the leg, with a few tough uphill
sections, although there was a really great long downhill stretch towards the
village of Otford (pictured) which I enjoyed.
The leg finished with a fairly boring long road stretch through Otford,
with a final tough little climb before finally arriving at the Rose & Crown
pub in Dunton Green. In the end I was
pleased to be told I had only finished 3½ minutes behind the other two runners,
as I had feared it could have been a lot more.
My final time was an average of 5 minutes per kilometre, so this shows
how much I slowed down later on.
Still it was a
fairly nice run, a typical North Downs Way leg – a mixture of running through
woodland, fields and a bit of road, generally flat but with a few tough
climbs. After my leg the SLOW team were
21 minutes behind Guildford, a margin which stayed pretty constant for the rest
of the race, so for the second year running we had to settle for second place
overall.
Leg 9 – 15.5 km
Result: 77:18 (winner 73:51) – 3rd out of 3
Team result: 16:50:38 (winners 16:28:13)
– 2nd out of 3 Full results here
Thursday
19 June 2008
SAX Trail Challenge – Knole Park, Kent
This is the first non-SLOW
“Trail Challenge” race I have done, and it is good to see the idea catching on,
with Nick Barrable hosting this event for Saxons (which he also did here last
year) and Southdowns also hosting regular Trail Challenge races these
days. I had not run at Knole Park
before, but the event was a good distance from work for me, just inside Kent,
so I decided to come along and give this one a try.
Knole Park is a
very good venue for this kind of race, quite similar to Richmond Park in many
ways – including plenty of dear wandering around throughout the park. Although the orienteering was pretty
straightforward (as is the intention with these races), there was also plenty
of route choice – it certainly wasn’t always easy to spot the quickest
route. Even the first leg had a large
split, with half the people going one way round the large house in the centre
of the park, and half the other.
I thought I would
be some way off the pace tonight, but I actually ran much better than I
expected. This might have been helped
because for once I actually paced myself quite well, and resisted all
temptation to try to keep within touching distance of Tim Britton and Ed Catmur
as they sprinted off into the distance and out of sight by shortly after
control 2. I was pleased to manage to
stay ahead of everyone else in the field, although I was running quite closely
to Mark Murphy (not a regular orienteer) until I eventually pulled away from
him about two-thirds of the way round the course.
It was quite a
hilly area (I measured 215m of climb) and a much longer actual route than the
straight line distance (my Garmin said that I ran 9.9km), so I was pretty
pleased with my overall time of just over 50 minutes. I was certainly flagging a bit towards the
end, and was very pleased that I had enough clear space behind me so that no
fast finish was required. Tim won
impressively with a very fast time, 4 minutes ahead of Ed, who was a further 4
minutes clear of me, but I was pleased with my result and had a very enjoyable
evening’s orienteering.
Tuesday
3 June 2008
SLOW loop race – Putney Heath, SW London
This was an informal
“summer” evening event, which unfortunately took place in a deluge of
rain. Despite the weather it was a great
fun little event, a mass start loop race with three equal loops of 1.7km in a
very small area which is the northern part of the much larger Wimbledon Common
map – but we did have the privilege of a newly updated map for this event.
I made the mistake
of trying to keep up with Ed Catmur for my first loop, and although I just
about managed this and still had him in sight at the final control of the loop,
I suffered from this quite a bit in the next two loops having been running a
bit faster than I could realistically manage.
I went on to make a silly 2-minute mistake on the second loop and then
gradually slowed down, although was spurred on by the news that I was in 5th
place at the second map changeover. I
lost a few more places on the last loop (though didn’t see anyone on my loop
out in the forest), but can’t complain with my final result which was just
behind all the people I normally try to compete with – I’m not fit enough at
the moment to beat them!
5.1 km course
Result: 33:40 (winner 28:28) – 7th out of 27 Full results here
Sunday
18 May 2008
Harvester Relays – Park Wood and Naphill Common, Buckinghamshire
Just down the road
from yesterday’s JOK Chasing Sprint was another well-renowned annual
orienteering race, the Harvester Relays.
This is an all-night/early-morning relay for teams of 7 (on the A
class), modelled on the famous Scandinavian races the Tiomila and the
Jukola. SLOW always makes an effort to
get teams to these races, and this year we did very well with the event being
so close to home, with 2 teams on the A relay and 4 teams on the B class.
Night orienteering
isn’t really my speciality (see my last attempt on 3/2/07) so I asked for a
daytime leg, and was handed leg 5 out of 7, the joint 2nd longest course on the
relay at 9km. My estimated start time was
just after 4:30am, which was due to be slightly before dawn, so I was a bit
worried that I would be setting out in the dark. I had the headlamp ready just in case, but
was really hoping not to have to use it.
Thankfully the team didn’t let me down, and my wake-up call from
Matthias finishing leg 3 came just after 4:30am, and by the time I got out of
my tent it was already pretty light. By
the time Patrick arrived down the run-in to complete his run on leg 4 it was
5:30am and as light as I could want it to be.
Unfortunately I’d been told
when I woke up that the team had already been disqualified due to a mispunch on
the first leg, which was a bit disappointing – but one of those things. We were never going to be in contention for a
prize, so didn’t really affect anything, and I went about my run as
normal. The field seemed to be well
spread out by the time I started so I didn’t expect to see many other people
out there, but I certainly passed a couple of runners who were doing the same
leg as me – one of them I passed twice, having made a careless 3-minute mistake
at number 10.
My running felt
very slow again, even more so than yesterday – probably not helped by it being
5:30 in the morning, but I have to say that I found myself walking even to
number 1 (the leg did have 20m of climb!).
I was going ok on the flat and downhill sections, but struggled on even
the slightest hill throughout the course.
But still it was very enjoyable to be out and running, especially with a
pressure-free run as the team was out of contention. I put on a burst of speed through the
spectator control in the field half way through the course (“only 3km to go!”
came the shout), before dropping back to a slow walk again as soon as I was
safely in the trees and out of sight. (though admittedly this was a very big
hill!) I eventually finished in a time
of 78 minutes for the 8.8 km – only 3 minutes quicker than I had managed for 2
km further at the TVOC event here in February.
At least I managed to beat Matthias’s time for the equivalent leg by 10
minutes, but he had been running at night!
Overall it was a
good fun event, and it was great to have so many SLOW runners competing. I’m just pleased I didn’t have to run on the
area at night, as I think I’d have taken a very long time indeed. No more races for me now for a while I think,
and hopefully in the meantime I might be able to get some of my old fitness
back.
Leg 5 – 8.8 km / 250 m
Result: 78:14 (winner 64:42) – 14th out of 21 (leg 5 runners only)
Full
results here
Saturday
17 May 2008
JOK Chasing Sprint – Bloom Wood, Buckinghamshire
This is only the
second time I have done the annual JOK Chasing Sprint, 10 years since the last
time (April 1998 at Stock Hill in the Mendips) – last time I finished 60th out
of 72 overall so there is a very small sign of improvement over 10 years! I should do it more often, as it is a really
good run race, a proper forest sprint-style race with 
lots of hot
competition. I just wish I could have
run a bit faster today, as I really felt somewhat off the pace – definitely
haven’t regained my fitness yet.
I didn’t feel too
bad at the start of the initial 4.6km “prologue” race, but was beginning to
slow down by half way through and really struggled with the big climb of the
course, a uphill slog of 50m ascent between 8-9 where I also lost a bit of time
finding the control. Other than this I
navigated reasonably well though, which was pleasing after almost 2 months
without any orienteering (discounting last Tuesday’s Trail Challenge race).
Despite my fairly
slow race I had a good target in the chasing sprint afterwards, with clubmate
Ollie O’Brien setting off just 30 seconds before me and a few other runners not
too far ahead – and no pressure behind me with a 1-minute gap to the next
runner. I managed to catch Ollie and two
other runners by number 3, but on the way from 5-6 I lost them all. Having been stuck in some brambles for a
short way fighting uphill, I felt knackered when I finally got out and very
slowly continued on, a bit demoralised that I’d lost my pack and lacking any
energy to catch them up again – and I lost another minute or more in the
control circle. I continued slowly on,
until at number 11, about 800m from the finish, suddenly Ollie and 2 other
runners appeared about 20 metres behind me – it turns out he’d lost even more
time than me on leg 5-6. I then managed
a sudden gear change and somehow managed to properly live up to the name of the
event, chasing and sprinting for home, just managing to stay ahead of this
mini-pack (despite losing a bit of time on the penultimate control – I led
everyone else wrong as well!).
So although I felt
a long way short of peak fitness, and would normally hope to have been several
minutes quicker on both races, I really enjoyed the event and having some good
fun racing competition for the first time in a long while.
Open course – Prologue: 4.6 km / 170 m ; Chase: 4.0
km / 115 m
Prologue: 33:09 (winner 21:48) – 58th out of 76
Chase: 30:24 (winner 20:42) – 51st out of 69
Overall: 63:33 (winner 42:33) – 53rd out of 69
Full results here Splitsbrowser -
Prologue Splitsbrowser - Chase
Tuesday
13 May 2008
SLOW Trail Challenge – Bushy Park, south-west London
Finally back to running,
exactly a month since the London Marathon and with almost no exercise at all
over that period. I decided that I needed a long rest, and other than a
few very short runs a week or so after the marathon to loosen my legs I had
done no running or sport at all over this time. I had a nice 2-week
holiday in the US, and came back a few days before this race nice and
refreshed, although feeling rather unfit.
A mass start 10km
race was always going to be a bit tough in those circumstances, so I wasn't
expecting to run particularly quickly tonight. SLOW’s “Trail Challenge”
races are very easy orienteering courses (about 'orange' standard), designed to
some extent to try and attract road-runners into the sport with some simple
orienteering. The popularity of these races has been growing steadily
over recent years, and there 
was a very good turnout
tonight, with 56 runners on the 10km course.
It was a lovely
warm sunny evening, and a really nice park to run around - I had never
orienteered here before, although had done the weekly 5km time trial a few
times. Ollie had planned a good course with some interesting route
choices around the fenced enclosures and streams. One of these stream
crossings was too tempting not to cross (see picture) to avoid a 400m detour,
although this did mean running the rest of the course with wet feet!
I actually ran
better than I expected overall, which was definitely helped by being realistic
about my fitness and not going off too fast (as I have a tendency to
do!). I settled into a comfortable steady pace early on, and managed to
maintain this quite evenly throughout. I was pleased to just manage to
catch Owen up on the run-in having been between around 10-20 seconds behind him
for the whole race up to that point. Still some way short of full
fitness, but not as bad as I thought it might be!
A few other
orienteering blogs: