Harvester Weekend
Last weekend I went to Wales for a weekend of orienteering. A middle distance race on Clydach Terrace and the Harvester Relays on Merthyr Common. Both area had been used for Creoso 2008, but I did not attend as I was in Chicago at the time.
Clydach Terrace
As we were staying reasonably close to this event we arrived early. The event parking was at a school, with use of the running track changing rooms. The course map is available – I have not plotted my route, as I am not quite sure where I went.
I started a little slowly – making sure that I got the first control spot on and using the time to get into the map. I lost 45s going to #5 – I recall that I dropped too far down the hill.
I ran and navigated well for the next chunk of the course. Managing to stay in touch with the map while keeping the pace up. I then lost 75s at #17 – I think I got confused by the vegetation change being indistinct. #24 saw a 45s loss – I went off course and then struggled to pick up which hole I was meant to be in.
I am then frustrated with my run to #26. I switched off on this long leg and revisited #21 and #18 on route. It was disappointing to lose 90s that close to the end! On the last long leg, into the final control, I tried to push the pace, but the vegetation here was difficult to run through. My finish time was 60:02 – a most frustrating two seconds. However, I was only 21 minutes down on the winner.
Merthyr Common
The Harvester Relays are a night/day competition. Both relay classes start at night and then finish in the early morning – the courses are set so that the winning teams should have half the running before dawn and half after, with the slower teams having progressively more day time running. I do not orienteer at night and so I was given the longest of the day time sections – which meant that I was the last runner for our team. If your team has slipped far enough behind the leaders then they hold a mini mass start and send the remaining runners off.
One of the big decisions of this event, particularly for the last runners in a team, is to how much sleep you try to get. Is it better to get a few hours of interrupted sleep or to stay up all night? I decided to have some sleep, which I felt was right. I was woken at 2:45am when our first runner got back and had to wake our second runner up – so much for setting an alarm! I went back to sleep and then woke up at around 4am I ate some food and went to find out how the relays were going. I was fairly sure I would be off in the mini mass start, which I did indeed do, but needed to make sure.
I started at 6:45am, with a group of others. I thought I had a grip on the map early on the way to the first control, but proceeded to lose 3 minutes running around in the wrong place – a very poor start. 
From here on I was running with a group for most of the rest of the course. I am pleased with my navigation on the long leg, but should have pushed the pace more. I had a 90s miss on #13, though I am not sure what happened here.
The most annoying mistake though was on leaving #15 I misread the map and thought the spectator control was next. I decided that this was an ideal time to break away from the group and sped up. The only problem was that halfway down the hill I realised that I had a control to visit before the spectator one and lost a minute climbing back up to it and, more importantly, I lost the impetus I had had to break away.
Overall, I just beat 75 minutes. I reckon that without the mistakes and by pushing the pace more, which I should have done, then I would have beaten 65 minutes.
