Owls Count

I know that some in the orienteering world are also into hashing. Well it seems that the authorities in New Haven, Connecticut, did not like the flour trail that two hashers had put out.

This link from Schneier on Security, where there is discussion of this incident and other ‘terror scares’.

I had not planned to do any orienteering for a while, but an opportunity came up to go to the BAOC event at Barossa today. They were running a one person relay event. The A course was four loops of just over 2km each. The B, C, and D courses were 3, 2, and 1 loop respectively - meaning that there were a reasonable number of people out on any loop. For those who wished there was a mass start - I, however, decided to go off before this.

I ran the first loop well, but a little too fast. After that struggled to maintain a good pace - having to walk in a few places. I am happy with my navigation - in most places it was precise. Overall a really enjoyable event.

For several years now I have been keeping an orienteering/training log. This is something I programmed myself, as a project to learn php/mysql. I keep thinking about moving to a different system - Attackpoint or Nopesport for instance - but then remember how much info I have already and decide not to.

Over the last few days I was talking shoes (both orienteering and running) with a couple of people. This lead me to thinking about how many miles I had run in any of my current pairs. So I updated my training log code and added a way of recording the shoes run in for each race/training and an overall mileage count for each pair.

When north is not north!
Over the last few months I had been noticing that every time I ran on a compass bearing I seemed to be ending up off to one side of where I had expected to be. I had been thinking that I was not running particularly accurately on the bearing, but on Day 3 of Spey2007 a group of us went off from a control going to the same place and I was distinctly off to the left of everyone else. On returning to my accommodation I borrowed a new compass from someone else and tested it against mine. I found that mine was between 10 and 12 degrees off line. Needless to say, on arriving at Culbin I was straight off to Ultrasport for a new compass!

Should you need to check out your compass then do the following.

1. Find a flat surface away from any iron or anything else that will attract a compass.
2. Fix a piece of paper to the surface.
3. Use the old compass to draw a north line on the piece of paper.
4. Check the north line against the north from other compasses - ideally they will match!

The recommendation I was given is to replace your compass every two years. Certainly it is worth checking it every six months or so - particularly if it is looking bashed up. Now we wait to see if my orienteering improves.

In the best traditions of the ‘rest’ day I kept fairly busy. I did not, however, take part in mountain bike orienteering - which sounds to have been fairly epic!

Tomintoul

My day started with a trip over to Tomintoul to visit the Whisky Castle. There I tasted a few, before picking up a bottle from the Blackadder group.

Sprint Race - Kinguisse

More photos from the sprint race.

This was my worst orienteering of the week. Both my running and navigating were poor. The photo in the middle shows me walking away from four - I took quite a few seconds to actually spot any route to five. For the second long leg, going to thirteen, I noticed several other people on the long course going in a direction I could not see a route for - totally missing a gate back onto the roads. Worse than just not noticing the gate, and better route, was then running off on the wrong road.