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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!
My knee is still sore, and I was on Catherine duty anyway, so I took her up to Cannock to this Chasers event. Unfortunately there was no string course, and it was a long walk to the start, but Catherine wasn’t too tired so we managed the whole event without the need for me to carry her! In hindsight I should’ve driven us from the assembly field to the little car park near the start, and then driven back to the field afterwards to download our dibber…
The weather made a big difference, of course. A wet, grey dawn gave way to a beautiful morning and C didn’t even seem to mind the fact she fell over twice in the mud. She’s now completed three white courses so I suppose she can claim her first orienteering badge!
p.s. Who should we meet on the way back to the assembly field but Hilary Palmer!
What makes a good bingo control? Well, usually it’s a pit or small depression with the flag hung low, well off the path and with a lack of obvious attack points. The most notorious example this year so far was the pit at Beaudesert in February. (The control wasn’t on my course, but the pit is visible on the map extract in my blog, just south of the straight line going into my fifth control.) By comparison, control 180 on Sunday was a cinch, but I think I was lucky to find it in under 7 minutes.
Checking the splits, the times from control 183 to 180 were: 5.03, 5.27, 6.03, 6.53, 10.23, 11.25, 12.20, 14.05, 14.08 and 16.06. That’s a lot of lostness. We were coming into the control from the east. Lots of other runners, on different courses, came into the control from the west, and their splits exhibit hardly any lostness at all. The vegetation boundary and the reentrant are reasonable attack points from that side, and I happened on the faint track made by the runners coming from that direction, which led me past the control. (I still nearly missed it! But I kept my head spinning round as I was running, and I spotted it just behind me to the right.)
Two points here. 1. Hanging controls low in pits is common behaviour, but it makes them as good as invisible. Experienced runners then get an advantage because they keep their eyes out for the bits of sticky tape used by the planner and controller to mark the control site.
2. It can be fair to hang the flag low if there is an obvious approach to the control, but the planner has to take special account of the fact that some courses might not take the runner into that obvious approach.
Well, well. Research has paid off and it appears that I’ve qualified for my M21S, Red and Blue badges. The final piece fell into place when I found the results for the event at Birches Valley 13/11/05. I remember it being a fine day and that when I arrived there was a queue of people waiting for maps. If I’d opted for Orange I could’ve saved myself about an hour in the combined waiting and running time, but I had in mind to do Red. Unfortunately the extra, freshly-printed Red maps included a control that had been removed from the course on the final version, which is why you can see on the results that it took me the best part of twenty minutes to reach control #176. Fortunately the presence of a busload of relatively er, inexperienced orienteers from Manchester Met Uni means that I still came in the top half of the finishers.
Quick question for those of you who weren’t there: why is that wiggly footpath shown as out of bounds?
Among the excellent performances that day I must mention Daniel Hartmann, first out of 130 competitors on the Green course, and Robert Farrington, 1st of 89 on Blue.
Short/White 1.0 km, 23 min 18 sec
Up the M6 to the Stafford corner of Cannock Chase; the weather forecast had promised rain but there’s just been the odd spell of drizzle. C had had a bad night so she was a bit tired. The course was all uphill at the start and by the third control she was asking me to carry her! But she was happy to see that we were at the top and it was virtually all downhill back to the car. C’s looking after the class teddy this weekend so we brought her along and she even punched the finish control.
Despite the area only being 1 km square it’s a good little area and I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed running the long course – maybe the Chasers will use it again soon for an evening event.
I wonder what the largest events have been in the West Midlands in the last ten years? Looking through my old results booklets, I’ve found one from a Chasers event at Badgerslade 19/1/97. I took some kids from school so I didn’t run, but 584 people did. Kudos to three Harlequins for winning their races: Hannah Wootton first out of 84 on Light Green, youngster Colin Spears first out of 126 on Green, and Andy Hemsted first out of 146 on Blue.
Right, I’m pretty confident I’ve qualified for my M21S bronze badge, thanks to runs in 1996 at Bentley Wood, Titterstone Clee and Croeso. But I’ve only found two qualifying red times and blue times. I’ve had some good “value runs” on blue: 82, 83, 83, 90, 91, 97, 99, and 122 minutes. That last time, at Hartshill Hayes in October 95, is probably my record for a run in Britain. (Nowhere near my all-time record – more on that another day.) Twelve runners out of 46 didn’t finish the course. One thing I’m proud of is I’ve never retired or been disqualified from a race**, but I don’t blame anyone for giving up, especially when on a day like that it turned out that the courses were far harder than the planner and controller appreciated.
**My memory was faulty. Checking old club mags, I see that I retired from the club championship race at Postensplain in December 1995. I wonder why? In happier news, I appear to have found a third Blue badge time. Two hours on the Malvern Hills, the winner having taken 81 minutes…
Question time. I once ran a blue course in 50 minutes and missed out on the Blue standard by two minutes. Where do you think that was?
Answer: Burton Dassett
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