Owls Count

This area allows for fairly fast running - there is little climb and the forest had little vegetation.

I probably needed to be more relaxed out of the start. A stupid mistake meant I ended up looking for the first control in the wrong block of forest, and so lost about four minutes on what should have been a simple first control.

The next part was fairly good until I headed off direction at number five and so spent a few minutes trying to relocate myself before finding number six.

The rest of the course was reasonable, but just not fast enough. I really need to get out and do more some training. I also struggled to keep my concentration on the orienteering.

The club faired reasonably in the CSC - unsuprisingly I was not one of the counters. As expected, we came in third, behind SO and SLOW, and had managed to turn out over fifty people.

This was a score event, organised as part of the Wednesday military league. Due to other commitments I rarely get to go out to these events, which is a shame - they are usually fairly good.

After a quick look at the map I decidedly that I would head out towards a group of controls and then decide on the rest of my route based on how long that section took me. This seemed reasonable and my judgement on what distance I could cover was only a little out. I ended end up a couple of minutes over the one hour limit - the misjudgement being how long the last part of the run would take and, so, I had to cut out a few controls I had intended to pick up on the way in.

British Orienteering Championships
(1st April - aka April Fools Day)

Very, very muddy. Slipped early on in the course, between controls one and two, and landed on a lump of rock. That left me struggling to run and so I decided to take it easy - walking much of the rest of the course. Cannot really comment on the course or area, as it is difficult to judge fairly when going round at a slower than normal pace.

British Relay Championships
(2nd April)

We arrived nice and early, which meant that we avoided the car parking problems that built up and eventually delayed the starts by 45 minutes.

I spent several hours taking photographs. Finally, it seems, that I am learning about all the different functions and modes to the camera. One of the functions I tried out was the rapid succession photos - used to reasonable effect to capture the spread of runners from the mass starts.

Later in the day I went out for a run - last leg in an ad-hoc team. Rather liked the area and course. It gave a good opportunity to build up speed, but still provided enough of a challenge to catch you out if you lost concentration. The injury from the day before was still causing some problems.