Owls Count

The first orienteering event for me this year and it was the club based competition - the Compass Sport Cup. Or rather Compass Sport Trophy, since Wimborne Orienteers are a ’small’ club. Having been ill in the run up to this event I was not expecting to run too well, meaning that I expected to keep up my form of never being one of the counting members for my club.

I started badly - losing 90 seconds on the first control where I ended up looking on a thicket in the wrong block of forest. I lost a little more time on the third control for reasons I do not now remember. From there I navigated well, but ran slowly to the road crossing. The first control after the road crossing I picked a slow route and lost a couple of minutes. The rest of the navigation was fine, until the last little loop where I lost some more minutes by not concentrating on where I was going.

Overall I was too slow - the recent illness meant that I had little strength in the legs and was struggling to maintain my pace. Unexpectedly I was the second best runner for my club on that course, though I still did not manage to count for the overall club score since those on other courses did better. To have counted I would have had to be more than twenty minutes faster, which would have been about where I would have finished with a clean run and no recent illness. So, possibly, something to aim for next year!

I am still not fully over being ill, but decided to start training again. I went for a run this morning - it was rather wet and windy out!