More fun after dark

I’m not as keen as I used to be about street races, mainly because my knees aren’t brilliant, but (Famous last words) they don’t seem too bad at the moment and I got round the recent Wordsley race okay. Did quite well, in fact. I don’t want to say this too loudly, in case next time they host an event hundreds of people turn up, but the post-race refreshments that Kerstin and Martin provided were excellent!

(I think I was the only person to go that way from control 7 to the finish.)

I’ve also been to two traditional night-O events lately, at Shire Oak and at Dudmaston. I didn’t set the forests alight but within the hour I found 18 controls at the former and 17 at the latter, and I’m feeling more confident with orienteering in the dark than I ever used to be. It’s good too that these events are so popular.

HOC night-O page

Sutton Night 2

This butterfly format meant it only took just over an hour to put out all the controls needed for an event with 5 courses, the longest being 6.4 km with 18 controls. Some thought just needs to go into the siting of the common control and into the positioning of the loops in order to avoid doglegs and repeating legs.

Scores:

David Williams 180
Chris McSweeny 180
Richard Dearden 170
Mike Baggott 170
Alan Halliday 150
Alan Segar 140
Ian Gamlen 130
Barry McGowan 120
Peter Langmaid 120
Bob Scott 100
Sarah Williamson 70

Splits

(not) seeing red

Another thing to add to the list of things we ought to be getting right by now…

There was a generally excellent HOC club championships at Stourport on Sunday. At the post-match do, Barry Houghton was poring over the map, trying to find the controls he’d missed. What made it harder for Barry, then and during the race, is that he’s colourblind. Put a red number on a green background (e.g. #75 on the race map) and he’s got very little chance of spotting its existence. Obviously this is something that the rest of us need to be reminded about, so it needs to go in the controller’s checklist if it isn’t there already:

1. Put control numbers clear of map details that they will obscure and/or be obscured by.

2. Check the overprint colour. Condes appears to be the worst offender, with the default (?) colour containing too much red. The correct colour should be darker and purpler.

Here’s some photos from the event. Congratulations to Ashley Ford, Alex Morgan and Rachel Dearden on being this year’s “main” champions. Alex beat last year’s men’s open champion, Romualdas Stupelis, by one second!

Results

What’s happening to the common (e.g. cattle grazing, tree felling) is quite controversial locally.

Shire Oak

Shire Oak Park is an old quarry on the edge of Brownhills, and one of the new O areas in Walsall mapped by Peels. As he’s already done at Fibbersley, Rough Wood and Barr Beacon, Barry McGowan has taken the lead in working with the council to get POCs and events going on these new areas, and all of them will feature in next year’s Walsall initiative.

The first event at Shire Oak was a couple of months ago. (Results.) The next event there will be a night-O race on Thursday 5 January. Small areas like this (it’s about half a mile across) are ideal for making your first attempt at night-O.

Hawkbatch

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Results

RouteGadget

Another good run for me, and for Catherine, who thereby won the W10 class of this year’s West Midlands League. Droobers were the overall League champions, of course.

On manoeuvres

Up to the Royal Irish Barracks at Tern Hill near Market Drayton for an Army event – a well-planned urban/sprint-style course with a little bit of forest in the middle to slow me down. A good run, no real errors to speak of, and the unusual feat (for me) of every leg being under 3 minutes.

Results

Sutton Night

Thanks for coming. It went well. COBOC will be running similar event nights at the Outdoor Education Centre on the last Wednesday of each month (except December). Results:

Long
1. Iain Embrey 42:50
2. Chris McSweeny 44:04
3. John Embrey 47:04
4. Dave Williams 53:58
5. Chris Embrey 56:57
6. Mike Baggott 59:40
7. Alan Halliday 60:40
8. Richard Dearden 70:42
9. Alan Segar mp
Medium 1
1. Ian Gamlen 57:06
2. Barry McGowan 60:19
3. Pete Carey 62:53
Medium 2
1. Marian White 47:38
2. Andy White 52:37
3. Dave Ellis 57:58
4. Mick Sadler 59:04
5. Robert Vickers 77:37
Short 1
Sheila Carey 42:43
Short 2
Sarah Williamson 42:03

Splits

A new type of handicapping

Because we couldn’t leave home till 11.30 and barely made it to registration in time, some compromise was necessary at today’s event on Cannock Chase. What we did was that we both started at the same time, but first I ran round the White course with Catherine to make sure she didn’t get lost (including a short stop while we tried to help Mick find his lost dibber) and when we got to the Finish I said Bye to her and I went off to find my first control, thereby giving everyone else on Green a 20-minute head start. Happy to relate I wasn’t last, coming 71st out of 86, and I would’ve done better if I wasn’t so afraid of getting my feet wet. On the way to the 2nd control there was a wide and muddy stream and after spending two or three minutes working out how to get across without soaking both legs I gave up and ran down to a broken bridge.

Results

Better

Back to Hay Wood. Droobers use this wood a lot, so luckily it’s a good wood. It’s flat and relatively pathless, and good planning meant that I recognised virtually nothing from my previous visits here.

Last weekend I was thinking how well my run was going and then, of course, I immediately mucked up. That mistake last week helped me to have a very good run this week: even though it was going well I didn’t let my concentration slip and I kept my total errors down to under 5 minutes. I didn’t spike numbers  2, 7, 10, 11, 12 but I wasn’t far off any of them. (Notice that three of them are clearings – I’m not sure how well they are mapped.)

It definitely helped to get off to a good start: picking up my map I saw the first control was going to be a tricky start, and perhaps I was lucky to get such a good bearing and hit the southern ditch junction perfectly and thence home easily in on the holly bush. There were a couple of people nearby looking lost when I punched.

It was the West Midlands Championships. I should’ve run Blue but Green is faster and funner. And just because I ran well on the Green doesn’t mean I would’ve run well on the Blue! Also, since I was giving Catherine some coaching on the Yellow ahead of the Yvette Baker final in a couple of weeks’ time, it’s hard to fit that and a Blue run in.

Results

Crikey

Last night I took Catherine to the first night event of the season, at Uffmoor Wood near Halesowen. We’ve both been getting some night-O practice in at COBOC’s club nights and Catherine has fond memories of doing the Chasers’ Maize Maze in the dark.

Somehow it had passed me by that the format has changed - instead of a 60-minute score event, the WEEs are now planned as “classic” events, albeit with a time limit. This first one was 9.4 km with 37 controls and a 60-minute time limit. Phew!! I half expected to meet Daniel Hubmann or Thierry Gueorgiou out in the wood… Still, not bad value for 3 quid.

I’d expected something a bit easier to do with a 7-year-old, but Catherine is a good sport and she ventured deep into the forest with me and we got round 6 controls in the hour. It was clear that in theory she found the experience rather scary, but in practice the fact that she was with me and we’d done similar things before took the edge off it for her. A bigger problem was that Uffmoor is pretty grotty and we had a lot of brambles to wade through. She needs some good gaiters to cover the entire area from shoe to knee.