Owls Count

Having finished at Hyde park we then moved over to Leeds University. As we were fairly early we started by going into the student union and having a mid-morning coffee and cake.

A chasing sprint orienteering event comprises of two races. In the first race, often called the prologue, you visit all the control points in the specified order, with the competitors starting one, or more, minutes apart. Then, for the second race, the winner of the first race starts first and everyone else starts behind this person by however many seconds they were behind after the first race. The overall winner is then the first person over the line - hence the name ‘chasing’ part of the event name. The ’sprint’ means it is an orienteering race with an estimated winning time of fifteen minutes.

Prologue
I did not start the prologue well. On the way to the first control I was struggling to read the map and wasted a minute trying to sort out the problem. For the majority of the rest of the course I was running and navigating well until a stupid mistake near the end.

I was trying to stay ahead of a couple of other people and jumped straight from control 17 to 20, as can be seen in my route. I then went to 19 and on leaving here I saw the two people who had been just behind me going in completely the opposite direction. I stopped, checked the map more carefully and realised my mistake. Then it was a case of going on to 18 and then returning to 19 and 20. Two minutes lost due to a really stupid mistake.

I finished in 23:27 but should have been under 20, which would have been about as far behind the 15:03 winning as I would have expected to be.

After this it was time for a spot of lunch. I decided on the salad option and had a big bowl filled with various items except the standard lettuce, tomato, and cucumber.

Chase
Then we moved on to the chase. This involved almost all the competitors starting within an eight minute period and the start officials coped very well to get everyone started on time.

The prologue course had a lot of controls close together, whereas the chase course had many less. This meant that the afternoon there was much more route choice and this allowed people to take a different route in an attempt to pull away from other people.

The route to the first control involved going down a lot of stairs - something I do not do well. I then ran off the mapped area, but luckily I managed to work out an alternative route round and only lost a small amount of time.

After this I was able to speed up and catch some of the people ahead of me. I caught up a handful of places with some strong running. Sadly I was then out sprinted by the final person I caught - I simply had no sprint left in the legs after all the running I had done. I finished in 23:03, just less than 7 minutes back on the winner. A fairly pleasing result.

Overall
Combined I took 46:30 for the two courses with the winner taking 31:46. On a better day I would have done about 42 minutes and been quite a few places higher. That said, I am fairly happy with the result - my navigation was mainly good and I was still running strongly at the end.

I was heading up north for a weekend of orienteering. On Saturday the races were in Leeds and they started late enough in the day that I could go and run the local parkrun first.

We stayed on the outskirts of Leeds and woke early enough for me to eat breakfast before travelling in to the park. After a initial attempt at going completely the wrong way we found the park. Getting out of the car I could see an impressively large team of florescent jacket wearing people walking around the park putting all the signs out. I had plenty of time and did a comfortable warm up with plenty of stretching to loosen the legs.

As there was a reasonably large field, 120+ people, I lined up a couple of rows back with the intention of not starting too quickly. Off from the start the first section is downhill and I found myself dodging past a few people and speeding up. A few corners turned and the first km is complete in a far too quick 3:44.

At this point a quick calculation says that 4:15 a km from here on will lead to a PB, which sounded so simple! I try to keep the pace going and only a few people go past as I complete the next km in 4:13. However, the small hill is really noticeable now and I am feeling hungry. The third km is tough going and takes 4:17.

The final two kms are all about hanging on. Only a few more people have gone past me and each time someone has I try to hang onto them for as long as possible. I never see the 4km marker and my body seems to be moving ever more slowly. Then the finish comes into sight. I can tell that someone is closing quickly and decide that I have enough left for a sprint finish and hold the person off. I fail to stop my watch and have no idea if I have managed to PB or not - I just know it will be close.

Several hours later I manage to borrow a laptop and internet connection for a few minutes. A quick check reveals I finished in 20:47 - a one second PB. Pleasing and it suggests that, if can get the pacing right, I can take a good chunk more off this time.

Yesterday saw the Compass Sport Cup and Trophy final in Sutton Park. The two competitions are the UK inter-club orienteering competitions, with the cup being for the ‘big’ clubs and the trophy being for the ’small’ clubs. Last year my club, Wimborne Orienteers, finished a disappointing seventh in the trophy.

My own run was fairly poor - I made a big mistake on the first control and lost five minutes. After that there were several other controls where I lost some time - seemingly I was not navigating well, though my running was reasonable and I did not feel tired after the 5k from the day before. Overall I was at least ten minutes slower than I should have been. The map is available but I have not drawn my route.

As usual it was the ladies in the club who were running well and contributing most to the club score. We finished third, which was our target and a pleasing overall result.