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So I have returned this past weekend for the British Night Championship weekend which had the Northern Orienteering Championship on the Sunday with great expectations – and none in the “result” department. I did want to do well on Saturday in the Night event in my own class, and then wanted the physical and navigational challenge as a training exercise on Sunday by running my first ever race in the M21E class (I was not orienteering at the time when we are at the peak of our abilities so never got to try that experience).

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t on my side – raining most of the drive up there (and back), and with named storms marking either side of the event I was sure that the terrain would be extremely wet. But who would not like to wake up to views like the one I had from my B&B conservatory?

After checking in, I drove straight to the event centre, having been warned that parking space may be tight. For once, I was there way too early! Very uncharacteristic, but at least I had the chance to snap a few photos to capture the beauty before night fell completely and it started to rain again.

And onto the race analysis. Having been well aware of the trickiness of the terrain and also recognising that even the organisers noted competitors should “look forward to a significant navigational challenge”, but confident of my physical shape (as far as the Night event is concerned), I planned to take it very carefully and slow initially.

The map was a 2-page map – provided here with my Quickroute analysis drawn onto it.

My strategy held for the first two controls – I was deliberately slow and precise, followed the contours well as planned and hit the controls spot on – yet still picked up roughly a minute each from the best splits, just simply due to my cautious start. At that point though I started to gain confidence and decided to go faster. Leg 3 proved the perfect example of what works in daylight does not work in the nighttime. I probably lost seconds at the first section getting out onto the road – being too direct meant I had to climb down the cliffs that took much longer than if I had curved around the small hill, then I upped the speed through the path and then down into the valley. This was almost to plan -my intention from here was to go up the hillside to the hilltop SE of the control, and use that as the attack point. This plan would have been great in daytime – but in the night, I could not see far enough to make out the hills, all I could see is the hillside in front of me, which I climbed and having gone up on what looked like a hilltop, ran on a compass bearing – only to realise that the hillside does not look at all what I expected. I was of course on the W slope, and took some time to relocate myself, Roger G having just caught me up, I managed to find the control first, only to then be leaving the control in the wrong direction and thereby losing contact with him. From this point though, I was able to execute legs 4,5 and 6 more or less as I planned, although it was a mistake in the middle of leg 6 to go so far up the hillside and not to run on the same path that I had on leg 3, which should have been quite a bit faster than curving around the hilltop was as I did. Control 7 gave me my second bigger mistake in the control circle – not having a clear attach point, I was hoping to make out the right cliffs, but despite having properly step counted I simply ran past the control (or, on top of it), there was simply too much detail around me – it didn’t help that about 8-10 people were all looking for controls in that vicinity at that point. I made sure that some others were looking for the same control as me before concluding in myself that I overshot based on the number of rock features around me and turned back, leaving about 3 other people into the control finally. Having messed up my rhythm, I shot off from the control without being crystal clear what I really should have done and started contouring around the hill – the problem with this strategy was that although I did not have to climb too much, I ended up not being very clear exactly where i was as again there were too many similar parallel features, so having crossed a few spurs and valleys, in the end it too significant effort to relocate myself as being SW of the control – then I climbed up to the problem to find it as expected, but not before losing a number of minutes on this debacle. The right plan, of course, should have been to climb up from control 7 using the valley SE of the control, all the way to the rough open hilltop just under the rock cliff, then follow the spur down in S direction to lead me into the control. It would have been about 10m more climb than a perfectly executed contouring around, but much easier to execute and I ended up gaining that much height anyway in the end due to the mistakes I was making.

At this point I was again wanting to up the tempo, and as I ran past the small lake I did spot a control on the far side of the path and ran straight there like a beginner, only to realise that of course, that was not the control I needed even if it was in the same rough direction that I needed to run. I turned back to run back for #9, before finally executing leg 10 exactly the way it needed and I planned.

At this point, the map had to be turned but I already incurred significant time losses and did not really have the flow, so I no longer had the motivation to push – all that was left for me is to gain experience and enjoy the challenge.

Leg 11 was the classic example of losing a lot of time on a control without making any mistakes. Quite a few M20 ran past me here – #11 was down at the bottom part of a very steep, rocky, slippery wet hillside, where I just wasn’t prepared to risk a broken leg or rib by galloping down too fast and maybe not being able to stop before falling down some cliffs. As the track shows, I was right on the line but just was climbing down very carefully. From there on 12 was a piece of cake, and I was still OK halfway through to 13, but that hillside was way too complex, and as I ended up a bit too high, that was sufficient for me not to see the control, and to start wondering around guessing whether I was too high or too low. I guessed too low and bounced back from the path starting to climb to look behind each knoll hoping to see my control, until I climbed enough to be out in a rough open area near the local hilltop. By this point it became obvious where I was so running down the path allowed me to attach the control from that side and find it properly, before coming back up the same path to go for #14 – but not before having lost quite a few minutes on #13. At this point it was crystal clear that my race wasn’t even going to be respectable, so a bit distracted and disappointed I decided to simply attach the uphill out of 14 – and as I lost my concentration I wasn’t noticing that I was going in quite the wrong direction. Having climbed too much I was actually quite lucky to have stumbled on my #16 , punched as the number was on my control description before realising that it was the wrong one and I was genuinely surprised about how I could have gotten there! But at least it made it clear where I was, and there happened to have been a relatively straightforward (though not fast) route back to 15. Finding 16 again wasn’t a problem, neither was 17 as by this time the rain and fog have somewhat cleared so I could actually make out the small local hilltop where the control had to be. No mistakes in the execution of leg 18, although in hindsight the plan wasn’t a very good one – it would have been faster to contour around the two local hilltops E of 17 that I ended up climbing over, and then using the path coming up the valley from the N to finish the leg the way I have done. 19-20-21-22 wasn’t a problem although I was careful with 20 as this was the hillside I messed up coming the other way so I was probably too slow here, and to get to 21 I probably should have started with dropping height first and then contouring instead of what I did, which was the other way around. The mistake to 23 felt bigger than it shows on the map – a case of mistaken reentrant confusing me for a while. No problem with 24-25 but then I was probably starting to mentally tire more than I noticed as after the uphill in the open area, I wasn’t very precise getting to 26, in fact climbing more than I should have and not reading the map very well I am afraid, ending up on the wrong side of the smallish local hill and realising it after losing far too much time. Once I relocated I ran back to the control whilst acknowledging Nick running on its way to victory, in the opposite direction, having already punched that control. By the time I got to the control and turned around, he was out of sight. There were no errors from here other than a suboptimal first part of leg 28 (should have gone around the other side of that small hill).

Overall, lost by about 50 minutes to Nick, of which well over 30 minutes were navigational mistakes. It just goes to show that the Lake District will provide a well-deserved winner, clearly, the better Orienteers will achieve better results there. I wasn’t even feeling tiredness in the end, despite having spent 2 hours in the forest as I was so slow most of the way around. Not a very good result, but a huge amount of learning to take away!

Commentary of the Northern Championships the next day to follow soon.

As part of my London Marathon preparation, I need to start raising the distances and need to actually not skip the long runs. For today, I figured I should get there early, and run both the Brown and the Blue courses as a training exercise. Yes, I am using these events as training opportunities, not as target races. Next weekend is the Concorde Chase where I will run Black, and that will be a race that I treat with higher significance than this weeks Galoppen – I will try and push all the way and see how my fitness holds up through that long distance. But as preparation, I wanted to run Brown as a race and then just jog through the Blue with 70% effort but use the terrain as much as possible.

As I got there they weren’t sure if they will have enough Brown maps, so I had to reverse the plan and run Blue first – this meant that it had to be the competitive one. By the time I got back they had plenty of Brown maps left but only 2 minutes before the start window closed, so I jogged around the Brown course, completing both as the training plan dictated, even though I was pretty exhausted by the middle of the Brown course.

Most of the Blue course was OK. I did wonder a lot of places why there were such a lot of undergrowth not mapped – in hindsight, looking at the Routegadget, I realised a lot more green on the map than during running. I have looked at the map hard now and realised that they were there, but hte green print was very faint, so I did not see a lot of it during the run. This effected my route choices and pretty sure even that underestimated the vegetation in places, especially between 11-12 where I was seriously stuck in brambles and what should have been dark green on the map. I have lost about 2 minutes there, running around on the track would have been much faster. My other bigger mistake was 4-5 where I have decided to run over the hilltop, again not realising that the open field on the other side would be full of brambles stopping me from just running down there. Running around on the track would have been again about 2 minute faster. Besides this I had smaller mistakes to 1 and 14 and a few seconds here and there, which means I legitimately lost 5 minutes – the remaining 4 minutes that I was behind the winner was purely running speed most likely.

As far as the Brown course is concerned, I wasn’t pushing the running at all so no expectation of any result and no use comparing times. However, I wanted to have a clean run at least, which unfortunately wasn’t the case. The first wobble came on leg 7, where I initially wanted to run out to the tarmac road, but a combination of seeing the (not really mapped) drop to and with of the stream, and my initial plan to use the course as a terrain running training convinced me to turn back and go more or less straight. That was a decent plan, but then very poorly executed. I ended up way too high and on the road, climbing 10m more than I needed, and not used the small paths as well as I should have. I then messed up 9 which was strange because I had that control on the Blue course where I had no problems, but the whole leg here was executed like a mess, more a hope and pray than a proper plan with attackpoint. I paid the price! Which as usually the case, lead to messing up 10 as well (though not as much). I messed up my pace counting probably because I started to look for the control too early and then veered right thinking I wasn’t on the right bearing. I did then turn back before it became an even bigger mess and luckily saw the control. I suspect leg 11 in a real race situation would have been faster running up on the track – the forest was full of brashings so it was a slog to contouring round. I even ended up above the control and almost overran by one spur but again luckily I spotted the control and ran back for it. Luckily this ended the streak of badly executed controls and the next few were quite precise, although I did actually take it very carefully in the tricky bits around 14-17. The only control where I made a slight mistake was 15 – learning from my mistakes yesterday I di have a good plan to run down the path and then the spine of the spur, unfortunately the complex terrain meant that I first came across a different reentrant than mine. I quickly corrected though. Leg 18 was another slog where the hillside that was supposed to be white was full of brashings and brambles and I would have been better off running around, at least in a race situation. At this point though I was quite tired and out of gels, so I really broke down to walking up there into 18 and out of 18 up to the crest of the hill. Luckily from this point there weren’t many climbs and neither did I make any more notable mistakes (though I did take one or two quite safe but longer route choices).

Two “B” course done then, a sum of about 19kms with just under 600m climb, mostly though terrain, a good training day completed.

This Wessex Night League event in Romsey, more a Street-O type event which I occasionally attend in the London area, except that there were proper controls out (thank you) as opposed to the SLOW Street-O events where you have to write down clues at every “control”. Touch-free punching also meant better flow in/out of the controls (usually – I had to double back for a few that didn’t register first).

Well planned by Rob Finch, you really had to think and there were quite a few options, not only for the generic strategy but specifically in between quite a few pairs of controls the route to choose. This is in my mind an indication of good planning as it reduces dead running – even though some of that is inevitable in a street event and there was some here too. A really nice intricate area in the NE corner of the map, had to take it carefully and almost felt like a Sprint event in that area with lots of rapid decisions and the opportunity to practice route simplification a bit.

In the end got 2nd place, exactly like I expected when I went through in my head driving there trying to guess the likely contenders. Dave Currie (SOC) won, and whilst in hindsight I don’t think my strategy was the best, he seems to have followed most of the same strategy, so this was purely about him being faster than I am. Not really a surprise there, but a confirmation of an aim for myself to work towards
Made a few errors amounting to about 2 min altogether (this includes changing my mind and doubling back a few times), and from a running perspective felt quite tired in the middle section. Not really a surprise after 2 relatively hard running sessions over the last 2 days. Once I conquered the uphill it became easier and somehow I also felt fresher from that point as well, so tried to push from that point on.

The positives – I was there on time (ha!), and it was an enjoyable challenging course. But this wasn’t my day – although nowhere near the catastrophe of some of the recent races, it was a combination of the state of my legs (tired) and random mistakes – I was only able to have the flow for periods. There was always something breaking up the rhythm – either a slight mapping issue causing me to make a mistake (I should be able to handle these by now), my lack of ability to execute the plan of simplification well and slowing down, or just some distraction of some kind.

So, as far as the analysis is concerned, time losses were:

• No. 6 (the first long leg) – I just overly generalised the plan for the leg. The route I took in the end, is not that bad – but, unfortunately as a result of the oversimplification, I had to slow down severely in the middle to figure out where I got to in crossing the many tracks. I had a good hunch but wanted to make sure – so stopping and relocating myself a few time cost about 2:30, and I had a really bad approach through rough to the control as well costing me some time.
• No. 11 – I was on the correct bearing but I just caught up someone before who veered left and unfortunately I did not have the mental strength to resist the pull – did not fully follow him but deviated sufficiently. Realised quickly enough and corrected but this cost me about 30s
• No. 12 – Really bad approach to the control. The map wasn’t 100% here, the rough open was basically hip high gorse, so had to fight through – but worse still, it made me question whether I was in the right place so I hesitated and backtracked a few times – and even on the previous rough open patch was a fight so very slow. Lost about 3 minutes here and got caught up by Kevin F who pulled Dimitry U with him.
• No 14 – I tried to avoid the pull of the train so opted to check out to the road earlier and run on it more – unfortunately, the barbed wire fence was an obstacle – took some time to find a safe place to cross and then it took time. By the time I was out on the road already have seen the 3 men train punching the control and I still had a minute and a half to go there.
• No. 16 – Not sure what the train ahead did but I caught them up here without seeing them for 2 controls…
• No. 18 – I am fairly sure that the pit wasn’t mapped precisely. I ran up the incline next to the ditch, expecting to basically fall into the control – which was nowhere to be seen (the GPS track clearly shows me starting the hunt at the right place). At this point the train in front broke up, I could see most members hunting around me for the control, Kevin was gone, but none of them got the control. As this made me question whether I deviated too far left, I decided to contour to the right in case I was actually tracking the wrong ditch. When I found not other obvious ditch, it became more and more obvious that I was in the right place, I finally bounced back from a patch of marsh with a control and ran back, attacking the control site from above this time and indeed found the very small pit with the control deep inside it. 2 other guys standing 2m from me didn’t see the control, I had to shout it out to them so they would punch (and then follow me). This little loop cost me 2:50s
• 20 was OK if a bit slow in the middle but I think I chose a good attack point for this and made sure to find it before I dove into the complex area, so although a bit slow in the middle but I thought it was good orienteering.

Altogether about 10 and a half minute lost on mistakes then, I am not sure how much on running speed, though…

Not a very good start (to say the least), but once Geoff caught me up at 7, the rest of it was actually quite decent. Based on how Geoff left me behind on the British Sprints in the spring, I fully expected him to leave me behind here too, but somehow we ended up changing “leads” until the end of the course, which was quite interesting as a learning experience, but also surprising that I could keep the pace with him. In fact in some cases I seemed to have been running somewhat better, and I had a strong suspicion that he was deliberately holding back. In any case reasonably happy with my running and how I coped with the hills, this area was much more like the Hungarian terrain than most others in England. Not fully – there was still a lot of undergrowth in lots of places, but a lot of the navigation relied on using big landforms which was a similar thing.

Mistakes:
1 – from my attackpoint I intended to find the earth wall and follow it to the control – instead the earth wall started a lot further out in the “white” forest, so ended up fighting through the green until I got out in the white bit and circled around for the control. Cost at least 1 min.
2 – Slight directional mistake on compass bearing, 10s
4 – Temporary brain melt – I thought I was going to No. 5 so as I got out to the road I started running right before realising and doubled back. 40s
5 – The nightmare control of the night. 8 min 10s! I would be very interested to learn if anyone knows of a technique by which I could avoid this. I knew the control was going to be tricky (a platform in the middle of the hillside), so I picked a good attackpoint and was very careful with my direction, and I even pace counted. I passed about 1m past the control not seeing it, then knowing I was too far, looked around, saw another control (knoll), located it on the map, ran down a bit to check if there was another knoll to figure out which knoll it was and ended up running past under the control again – this time by about 5m! – scanned the hillside above on the way back, going back to the knoll, using compass bearing again this time direct from the knoll, and this time hit the control spot on. The reason I am upset is that this cost me over 8m (which is more than what I ended up getting from Geoff in the end!), and it looks to me to be sheer luck, considering I was just running past this control this close!
6 – for good measure I ran past this control as well by about 10m. 1:30. Ben caught me up at this point, with Geoff not far behind. I decided to try and run with him for a bit, knowing the young legs will get rid of me soon enough.
7 – Took all of 1 controls for him to get rid of me but to be honest this was again my stupidity. Running around the dark green on the road, then running on bearing from the corner, I saw that Ben was running too far to the right. I kept my bearing for a few seconds longer then the “he is in the top 5 UK ranking so must know what he is doing” thoughts took over, and I gave up my bearing to run right too. At this point I also convinced myself that this was right because of the curvature of the spur… of course I was right first and wrong second! Geoff caught me up at that point cutting across the green and picking up our headlamps, but Ben fixed his error first and by the time the penny dropped for me, he was gone. I spike the control in front of Geoff (just) and expected him to run past here. 40s
9 – Out of 8 Geoff was slightly ahead now and he was running too far left but I did not want to let him go completely so I ran with him instead of going direct. We picked up the path and smaller route choice differences meant I ended up spiking the control ahead of him. Nevertheless I think this could have been faster going direct by about 30s, although I would not classify this a mistake.
10 – running ahead of Geoff on the road, I ran into the forest at what I thought was my attackpoint, the path in the middle of the green. It soon turned out to be simply the ditch slightly before the path, so as Geoff followed, we both had to fight through the dark green before finding the control. 1m – at this point Geoff ran away through the undergrowth (he deals with that better, it is quite clear).
11 – Got to the control ahead of Geoff as he made a mistake running off the wrong road, but made up that mistake by the control. From here on until 14 the recepie was the same – Geoff ran past me in the rough, then I was cleaner into the control and spiked it in front. He kept behind me to 15/16, then again started his engines to 17 overtaking me in the rough. Then again made a directional error out of 17 so I spiked 18 and finish ahead.

Very interesting, although to be honest more as a head to head racing than the course instead.

Left about 13:30 in the course then, of which the most annoying clearly was No. 5 with that 8+min mistake…

This past weekend was very British. Of course, the British championships were held both in Sprint and Middle, but with the added occassion of Queen’s 90th birthday celebration, and the Sprint being held in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, we were entertained by the flypast, as well as quintessentially British weather (meaning: heavy rain).

From a competition perspective, the Heats (where starts were delayed by 20 minutes) were a bit of a letdown – felt too easy, definitely would have been a runners course. The highlight was control 20, which was the Olympic rings:

Whilst navigation was mostly (too) easy, I did make mistakes:

• Coming out of Control 6, I started to plan ahead which meant I noticed too late that I was past the house corner and could now run towards the control.
• Out of 14, I was close to going out of bounds: I was just in time warned by someone (luckily) that I was about to enter the OOB area so I corrected and ran along the seating area, but that meant I was distracted so entered the ditch overgrown with vegetation too low. I had to go back out and look for the control further up.
• There were several places where I had to jog slowly because the logical route was very narrow and I could not pass slower people in front: the pond bank to 12, the bank down and up to/from 18, and to/from 20.

With all of this I wasn’t fully happy and quite sure I left at least a minute in the course, so was very surprised to learn that I won my heat! I am sure the organisers had a nightmare with the park authorities and do not envy the planner – nevertheless I have to say even in hindsight not all the OOB area is clear on the map. For example, near No. 14, the OOB marking is bound by a “vegetation boundary” dotted line, not a solid line. Whilst strictly speaking it isn’t an ISSOM requirement, I think it hinders legibility because the OOB colour is very similar to “rough open”, and on the ground these areas did actually look like the rough open you’d find in marshes, for example – and also looked (at least to me and at sprint speed) like the vegetation in the marshes near 11-12-13 which was a crossable area.

Result for the Heat

I also do not understand the planning of the placement for No. 17: it was at the end of a short “dead end” into an OOB area, but all those OOB marked areas on top of the bridge were similar vegetation areas (like flower beds), so I had to run around the flower bed and double back again. As the strip of the vegetation was very narrow (maybe 1m), it was very inviting to just jump across the OOB flowerbeds, which was of course forbidden, but as the control was clearly visible from the other side, I can not see any other reason for placing the control in there than to tempt people to jump across. There was no added navigation difficulty, nor route choice options, and only added about 10m extra running (if that). I would argue there would be nothing lost if the control was placed on the outer tip of the vegetation.

It is then not surprising that many were disqualified from the heats. Including one of the favourites in our class, Roger G.

All the protests around disqualification etc then pushed the start of the finals out, in the end by more than an hour. This was enough for the very British weather to arrive, with a massive downpour! Whilst I ended up starting in a bit of lull in the rain (it did get going again in the middle of the run), I had to fish out the map from under standing water in the map box.

An appropriate signage next to the start!

The finals were very different from the Heats. We were in the Olympic Park proper and many more navigational challenges were finally introduced:

• I had started slow to make sure I got the planning right, and concluded that I should stay high on the way to No. 2 to avoid the long steps down and up. Now, once I got to No. 1 I noticed that the map wasn’t completely accurate, as the steps weren’t going all the way – in fact it was a lot more runnable with 3 steps and about 10m level pavement alternating. However, part of the plan was to stick to my decisions as a principle as avoiding hesitations is key in sprint.
• No. 3 – I expected the control to be visible from below in the parking lot, but it wasn’t – I then followed an elephant track in the high grass up the bank to the monument even though I suspected it will be too high for the control. Once there, I looked around and could not see the control, I had to jog down and be right next to it before I noticed. A further 15-20s lost, and by this time I was over half a minute down and only 3 controls in the course. This duly caused me to be just a bit off my concentration and for a couple of controls I just lost my flow, and was therefore too hesitant and just too slow.
• I picked it up from No. 11, where exiting the control I saw Geoff chasing me down for 2 minutes as I was running back up the path. This somehow caused me to get myself together, and although knowing his speed I fully expected him to run past before No. 12, I was surprised to see him more behind as I was going back up the bank out of 12 (as he later explained he made a mistake and took a longer route to 12 than I did). I managed to keep him behind me until the underpass between 16-17.
• From here, I tried to keep up with Geoff but was very keen to keep on top of my navigation at the same time. This meant that I was slowly losing touch (he is just too fast for me), last saw him across the bridge on the way to 21.

In summary, this was a final that I ran without any major mistakes, but very hesitant and in a lot of places just not concentrated enough and too slow. I considered it an OK run but not a great performance. So to me great surprise I managed to be placed 2nd and so a silver medalist!

Results for the final