Tamar Triple
Last weekend I travelled to Cornwall to compete in the Tamar Triple weekend of orienteering events, which took place on Penhale – an area of sand dunes situated to the south of Newquay.
Day 1
I started fast for this race, probably too fast. The splits show that I was in the top ten after the first seven controls and then that I fell away. Mainly my navigation was good.
The one section I had problems with was on the far loop of the course. On sixteen I ended up messing around and found nineteen first. Just to compound the error, on the return I went through sixteen on the way to nineteen. Three minutes lost through a lack of precision.
Day 2
I started well, making sure I concentrated out of the start for the first few controls. My route to four was a bit too far off the straight line and I lost a little time. Similarly, my route to nine was not ideal, though I ran this stretch quickly.
At ten I made my first real mistake – I did not drop far enough down the hill and relocated off the path beyond. The next section was tough in the long grass and with it being fairly hot. I made a mess of sixteen. I missed that I had crossed two paths and ended up relocating off seventeen, losing six minutes in the process.
The long leg to eighteen was were it really went wrong. For most of the leg I knew where I was and then struggled to locate the control. I ended up wasting fifteen minutes in this area, as I was unable to sort out where I was. Eventually, more by luck than judgement, I stumbled into the control.
I then compounded this by losing a couple of minutes at 21 by misreading the map, but by this point I had lost interest.
My route shows the problems I had. I should have finished in about 85 minutes and not so close to the bottom of the results.
Day 3
After the poor second day I decided that I would run the last day at a slower pace, to be achieved by keeping my heart rate at 80-80% of maximum. My navigation was much better and there was no big mistake.
I lost some time at the second control, but the GPS route suggests that the control was in the wrong place – something that some others have since commented on – and this was not the only control to have been in the wrong place. This, though, is the only control in the wrong place that seems to have cost me any time.
On the way to four I drifted off to one side and relocated back off six. This lost me three minutes. At nine I overshot a little, but realised quickly.
I stopped for a drink on the way to nineteen and lost some time by continuing to run on without first checking where I was going. I made a mess of the route to 22 and ended up too far across.
Overall a much better run, though it could have been around 80 minutes – i.e. eight minutes better.
