Lower Earley
The local orienteering club were putting on an event near to where I live and I decided it would be silly to miss out on the opportunity to orienteer around an area I run regularly. The 1:10000 forest spec map, for an urban area, was disappointing and difficult to read. The physio had said I was allowed to run for around thirty minutes, which meant I chose the medium course.

My route shows that I mainly picked the best options, as one would expect of someone who runs regularly on the area. I lost a little time at two, where I should have picked the westerly route choice and leaving three I did not spot the northerly cut through the fence.

I took 36:24 and finished fourth, out of twenty nine people, a few minutes down on the winner.

Sandhurst
I took the opportunity to get out midweek and take part in a race at Sandhurst. This area has been recently remapped and the new map is good – clear and easy to read. I decided to do the long sprint, which I expected to give me a twenty-ish minute run.

My navigation was mostly fine. Leaving the second control I went a different way to the one I had intended, but sorted out the problem with no loss of time. After that it was a case of running smoothly and concentrating on the navigation.

I took 20:18 and finished thirteenth, out of fifty three people, a few minutes down on the winner.

Post JK: Slievenagore
The course provided us with lots of opportunity to test our hill running. I made a mess of an early control – spending far too long finding the third control, as can be seen by the mess that is my GPS route in this area. I was well down the results with too much time lost on the navigation and by running slowly.

The photo shows the Silent Valley Reservoir. The big hill on the north edge of the orienteering map is the one to the left in the photo.

Post JK: Meelmore
This proved to be a much better day. My route shows that I did not have any big mistakes. I was off track in the boulder area near number five and I strayed too far up the hill at seventeen. My running and navigation was both much better than on the previous day and I finished a lot higher in the results.

Irish Championships: Middle – Glendoo Ridge East
I woke up on the morning of this event feeling unwell. I went to the event and then up to the start. However, I decided that it would not be a good idea to run and just went out to look at the peat cuttings, as I wanted to see the map to ground relationship before going out on them on the relay day. This meant I did the last half of the course.

The same illness problem also stopped me from doing the Long event on the Sunday – I sat up at the finish watching everyone else.

Irish Championships: Relays – Glendoo Ridge West
I was running last leg on a relay team with my parents. Mum had gone out first and had had to retire. This caused dad to go out a good fifteen minutes in front of the other teams in the relay. He then got announced through the radio control very quickly. I used this as my sign to join the changeover area and start my warm up.

I started badly – losing time on the first control by dropping the electronic timing chip and having to find it in the heather. I then charged off towards the second control, but with no plan on how to find it and wasted a few minutes before sorting out the problem. I calmed myself down and ran well until I the seventh control, when I again lost time again.

The second half of the course went much better. My route shows the detour after fifteen, when I stopped at the car to drop off the extra top I had taken off due to it being warmer than expected.

Sprint – Stranmillis
This was a rather frustrating experience and in the type of area where I usually do well. I had entered elite class and, for once, not got seeded off to the open class. This means that I was running in the World Ranking Event (WRE), which brings with it a few extra rules. The main noticeable one of these is not being allowed to use a GPS device with a display – i.e. my Garmin 305. Hence, I am not fully sure where I went in several places on the course.

As can be seen the map has much small detail – difficult to read even now on a screen and very difficult to read while running. The mistakes I made were at four, where I cannot blame the map as I was looking for the control on the wrong building. At twelve I lost nearly a minute – I could simply not work out what was out of bounds and took a massively long route. Later in the course I lost some more time, through 24 and 25, by making stupid route choices.

I finished as 88/107 in M21E, with a time of 22:52 – compared to the winner who took 13:29. When the rest of the people running the course are added in I finished 140/177.

Middle – Tyrella South
Again I was running the elite class, but on this day it was not a WRE so I had my Garmin with me to record where I went. For the main part my route shows that I made a fairly good job of the navigation. The vegetation was less distinct than the map suggests – with much of the gorse, the green blobs on the map, having been burnt.

My reward for remaining in the elite class was an early start – though this played in my favour, as it was cooler and there were few other people around to distract me. Most of the time I lost was near the end of the course, when a group caught me up and I allowed them to influence my navigation. I made a couple of poor route choices in the first half of the course, but these did not cost too much time.

I finished as 73/81 in M21E, with a time of 66:30 – compared to the winner who took 34:38. When the rest of the people running the course are added in I finished 116/136. This was my best result of the weekend.

Long – Slieve Croob
The elite class has a long course on this day and I did not fancy this, so I ran the short class instead. The navigation should have been easier on this area, but I made a fair mess of it and finished well down the results. My route shows the problems – either spot on or wandering around the hillside.

I finished as 19/37 in M21S, with a time of 86:57 – compared to the winner who took 54:06. When the rest of the people running the course are added in I finished 46/86.

Relay – Tyrella South
I am usually reasonable in the mass start of the first leg of a relay. Here I was not. The change of map scale to the individual day on the same area caused me some problems and then I managed to make a mess of the first control and lost the pack.

I then proceeded to make one of the stupidest route choices to the fifth control possible. I cannot show you where I went on a map, as the relay has not been put onto RouteGadget. There were two sensible choices to getting to the fifth control and I chose neither. I lost a little more time on the final part of the course, but by this point I was well down.

Our team did not have a third runner. I had considered going out a second time, but decided that this was not a good idea.

I did start the sprint final, but realised at halfway that I should stop and jogged back to the finish from there. I choose not to even attempt the British Middle Championships the next day. Overall a disappointing weekend.

I spent some time out with a camera and took photos of the finish at the sprint qualifiers; the finish at the sprint finals; and the elite start at the middle.

(And this catches me up on race reports just before I leave for some more races.)

Generally, as my route shows, I had a good run. A number of other competitors had bad days, which meant that I finished a lot higher in the results than I had been expecting – particularly after the 5k race earlier in the day. I finished 4/14 of the south west in the M21 class and 13/35 on the course.

Looking at the splits shows I lost 40s on the first control, as I struggled to make sense of the map at first and the vegetation. I lost about a minute between seven and eight, both times by looking in the wrong place for a short while. At the last control I lost another 40s when I hit a control on a different course first and then had to work out what I had done wrong.

My route shows both the good and the bad of my orienteering. At three I stayed too high on the hillside and lost about a minute working out what was going wrong. I lost at least a couple of minutes by leaving the fifth control in the wrong direction and not noticing for quite a while – even the fence appearing unexpectedly on my left failed to alert me to there being a problem! At ten I was confused by the earth bank appearing to stretch further to the east than is mapped.

Overall I am happy with my time. Running faster would have helped on this area, but my legs were tired after the efforts from the previous day.

I ran the short open (course 5) at the event and was disappointed, on seeing the longer courses, that we did not have the long leg from top to bottom of the map – roughly equivalent to removing controls 12 and 13 on my course. Also, due to the way the different age classes are split up by the different map scales at an event of this type, there was a lack of competitors on my course and this means no ranking points.

Prologue
In the prologue my route shows the meanderings I took. For a few too many of the controls I was messing around and not going direct enough. The fourth leg was particularly bad!

For the long leg, to control six, I took the left route, which has more climb. On reflection, this was probably a bad choice, though it does not seem to have cost me much, if any, time. What did cost me time was switching off at the last control and taking ages to get to the finish.

Chase
In the chase my route was a lot better. I started poorly – rushing to catch the person in front rather than concentrating on going in the right direction.

From control eight I was right behind a club mate and deliberately took a different route to thirteen to try to get away – though that only put me a few paces in front instead of a few paces behind! I managed to stay a couple of paces in front all the way into the finish, but neither of us caught the other person who was just in front – my sprint finish failing me.

Positives for the Year
Duchy Marathon – a near half hour PB.
Running in the snowy altitude of Santa Fe.
Doing a noticeable amount of cross training.

Next year I intend to run more.

This year I have not put in as much training and knew that I would be running more slowly than last year. I started more slowly and slowed down a little. There was a noticeable, but not large, breeze on the return. I ran 22:33 – 31 seconds a kilometre slower than last year. I guess I have some training to do if I want to be running faster!

On Sunday I went to the South London Orienteers’ event at Longmoor. I decided not to run and instead went around taking photos. As the photos show, we have had some snow in the south of England!

The area and courses lent themselves to fast running, with the aim of keeping the navigation accurate. My route shows that for the main part I went well. I had a problem at number three – going a little off direction and then relocating. For number ten I took a longer route than was necessary – I was struggling to read the map in this area.