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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.
Three runs this week to get back into the swing of things. Tuesday was a street event in Shrewsbury. I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t use the proper O map, but I didn’t mind the quiz format too much – it’s a nice bit of fun for the summer. A pity though that the central area was so faint – it made my progress to the finish even slower, having already succumbed to a case of vibrating kneecap.
But that didn’t put me off travelling to Hinckley on Thursday for LEI’s end of season Burbage event. The ground there was much springier than the streets of Salopia and my legs were much happier. I wondered whether this event was sponsored by IOF, to trial the mass-start ”Hagaby” style of race that they’re thinking of introducing into the world championships. What you do is split the course into sections, and have alternative routes for each section. The runners go round the course twice, but the second time they do the controls they didn’t have the first time round.
Today I took Catherine to the first event of the new season: a middle-distance event on Cannock Chase. Thanks to the Mitchells and the Whites both Catherine and I were able to run. She was brilliant today, zooming round the White in under 10 minutes, coming first overall. 
She even said to me that it’s a good idea to check which way you need to go next before you arrive at a control. My performance was a more modest 13th out of 28. I was 3rd after 4 controls, but later on I managed to take 4 minutes to do a 100m leg…
Tomorrow the British Championships are being held on Cannock Chase, and for the new issue of the West Midlander Peter Guillaume has kindly dug out some items from the last time they were held there, in 1977. There isn’t room for the M43 course map, so I’m posting it here:
Update: although that’s the BOC 1977 map, it appears that that isn’t a BOC 1977 course! The map must’ve been reused a year or two later.
Despair! Second to control six on the Green course at today’s Chasers event on Hednesford Camp, the wind in my sails on a gloriously crisp and sunny March morning, I punched the control and then ran off in completely the wrong direction… A little while later I looked down at my hand and discovered, attached to my thumb, a polygonal piece of clear plastic with this spinning red line thingy in the middle of it and it dawned on me that I’M WEARING A COMPASS – MAYBE I SHOULD USE IT!
(I also lost time at control 10, where the flag was on the wrong land feature, about thirty yards away from where it should’ve been. How it got there is a mystery…)
Fun in the sun on Cannock Chase this morning. After yesterday’s exertions, I’m not sure I would’ve been up to running an adult course today, so luckily it was time to take Catherine.
Congratulations to Walton Chasers for their excellent national event on Cannock Chase yesterday. Checking the results, I counted 1,000 competitors! WTG
I was late getting to the Chase today for the Brindley league event, and made myself later by parking in the wrong car park, meaning I had an extra climb up to registration… Then I nearly put the kibosh on my run altogether by somehow losing my hired dibber by the time I got back to the car on the way to the start. But, weirder still, my own dibber, which I thought I’d lost, suddenly turned up, so I ran using that!
Like Fineshade a couple of weeks back, Brindley Heath is somewhere you stick to the paths, and it wasn’t surprising that my attempt to run direct through the heather to the sixth control (#171) ended in tears. Still, I ended up 8th out of 48 on Green. I chose a shorter course because my left knee is a bit iffy and I need it for next Sunday’s run at Titterstone Clee. Looking forward to it.
Since the WMOA website refuses to publish such information, here are this year’s West Midlands champions, elected last weekend on Cannock Chase:
M10 Alex Mitchell HOC
M12 Harrison McCartney OD
M14 Matthew Elkington OD
M16 William Gardner OD
M18 Matthew Halliday OD
M20 Adam Bushnell WCH
M21 Robert Little WCH
M35 Steve Parker HOC
M40 Jason Howell HOC
M45 David Nevell HOC
M50 Barry Elkington OD
M55 Bob Dredge WRE
M60 Mike Hampton OD
M65 Brian Morris WRE
M70 Colin Spears HOC
M75 Norman Hall WCH
M80 Frank Smith OD
W10 Ella-Rose McCartney OD
W12 Aimee Morse OD
W14 Julie Emmerson OD
W16 Emma Kettley OD
W18 Sophie Kirk OD
W20 no winner
W21 Jessica Halliday OD
W35 Sharron Richardson WRE
W40 Ianka Evans WCH
W45 Suzanne Humphries OD
W50 Carol Dredge WRE
W55 Hazel Waters WCH
W60 Sheila Carey OD
W65 Jean Rostron POTOC
W70 Hilary Simpson OD
W75 Marlene Palmer WCH
W80 Pamela Emberton WCH
Congratulations to one and all. It was a fine day and a fine event. I was there but did the Yellow with Catherine. (Note to users of AutoDownload – isn’t it possible to correct the name of the entrant when they’ve used someone else’s SI card?)
The last time I was at Fairoak they ran out of maps, and it happened again today! As the weather deteriorated from sunny blue skies to driving ice rain I decided not to wait for a freshly printed Blue map (they hadn’t run out of Red maps) but then they arrived so I ran Blue after all. The results show a total of 360 runs, which is excellent but not unexpected for the Chase. The total at the 2005 event was over 460!
I didn’t make any big mistakes, though I lost a bit of time on the one-mile leg to #4 by going left instead of right round the dark green. 48th out of 96, which means I achieved Blue standard. I’d class that as a good run then, but it’ll clearly be a little while longer until I can achieve Brown standard. A shout-out to Keith Willdig, who I caught up with on the way to #5, and then we had a good race round the rest of the course.
#9 is a good example of a simple compass-bearing control. Arriving at Kitbag Hill (the major track) it was just a case of “south south south”!
I almost ran the Brown today, but it was over 10km! I’m feeling more confident these days that my knee will last out over longer runs, so I might’ve run the Brown if it’d been within the guidelines. Although Brown courses should be 7.5-10 km in length, “Planners should note that course length ratios refer to course lengths which are “corrected” for height climb by adding 0.1 km for every 10m of climb.” (BOF January 2007) Why do so few controllers enforce this??
Around controls 10 and 11 is the site of the former RAF Hednesford, which was in use for twenty years in the 1940s and 1950s. Its final use was as a refugee camp for Hungarians fleeing the aftermath of the ’56 revolution. As you can see, there’s very little sign of the camp left.
Photos from today and from yesterday’s event at Coombe Abbey. Another event where they ran out of maps. And that in spite of the £3 car-park fee. Eek!
Yesterday was day two of the three-day coaching course in Sheffield. Driving up and back in the fog wasn’t much fun, but at least the bad weather meant that the roads weren’t as clogged as they were last time. After some work on teaching compass use, most of the day was spent practising coaching at Level 3 on the Step System. Steph Young and I were given relocation. I think the exercise we worked out was good fun, but it was pretty tricky to explain to our pupils…
Split into pairs; one person in each pair is A, the other B. There are two maps – A can only look at the A map, B only at the B map. A navigates to the first control on his map. B then navigates to the first control on her map, the only problem being that she doesn’t know where A has taken her to. When she finds her first control, she navigates to her second control. Then A can look at his map again, and he now has the problem of navigating to a control from an unknown starting point. Was that clear?
Today was cold again but clear and I took Catherine up to the Walton Chasers regional event. There we met C’s schoolfriend Mollie and her dad and we all went round the string course and the white course. The string course was excellent, but the White wasn’t ideal. At 1.8 km it was outside the guidelines, and the walk to the start was even longer! (it took us an hour and a half altogether.) Another problem was that the 200-metre route from the start punch to the start flag was along a narrow path, and the girls were in danger of being flattened by burly lycra-clad Yorkshiremen! Perhaps there should’ve been a separate junior/colour-coded start??
So we got plenty of exercise, and honours were even: C beat M by 6 seconds on the String, and M beat C by 3 seconds on the White!
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