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Yesterday morning Catherine was sent home from school after being sick on the classroom floor; soon after she got home she fell down the stairs. Not a fun day for her, or for Marti, who was feeling under the weather herself. So it was kind of them, soon after I got home, to let me go for my Thursday evening run – at Mike Baggott’s event in Redditch. But the family stars must’ve been in misalignment. I hit my right calf on a thin rootstock just after the first control, and it was a bit sore but I thought I’d run it off as usual. Bad idea. Running uphill to #4 the calf went bang and my race was over. “Calf strain” doesn’t sound too serious but I can hardly walk and I’ll be out of action till June…
Oh, and when I stopped on the way home to buy myself a treat, I discovered that one of the two quids I’d got at the event in change was a fake. Never rains…
Time for a few ads…
1. Harlequins’ Thursday evening series is under way and carries on through August.
2. Droobers’ new park race series begins in Coventry tomorrow.
3. We’ve just had a bank holiday, I know, but the next one is very soon. That means Springtime in Shropshire!
4. Before then, on the 17th, there’s a Level Two event in Bentley Woods, and the entry deadline is this coming Sunday. Maybe the timing is bad, it coming the week after the big races in Nottingham and Thringstone, but I hope the number of entries pushes on well beyond the current 145. (Even assuming they do, I think some of the age classes ought to be combined at smaller regional events like this one: e.g. 18+20, 21+35, 40+45, 65++.)
Although I can’t find the map, I’ve found the results of the only event I’ve run there: it was the Midland Champs in February 1996. A good run by my standards: I got a “silver” time on M21S. This year’s event seems better value for money: the M40L was 8 km in 1996, while this year it’s 10km!
Excluding the string course, there were 637 competitors, and these were the course winners that day:
10 Megan Greenall OD, Nicholas Tinker MDOC
12 Emma Whitehead DVO, David Hodkinson NOC, Matthew Dickinson DVO
14 Julia Leventon WRE, Stephen Wright NOC
16 Hannah Wootton HOC, Alastair Footitt NOC
18 Claire Daniel HAVOC, Adam Harrison WAOC
20 Jo Abbott WRE, David Jenkins LSOC
21 Alice Bedwell BOK, Jamie Stevenson ESOC
35 Janet Evans NOC, Stephen Kimberley DVO
40 Jane Booker NOC, Barry Elkington OD
45 Judith Holt LEI, Roger Richards WCH
50 Sue Porter LEI, Rex Bleakman DVO
55 Judith Powell WRE, Brian Morris WRE
60 Marlene Palmer WCH, Peter Bayliss WRE
65 Barbara Bradley WCH, Frank Smith OD
70 Phillip Broadhead LEI
p.s. I love you too, Mark.
Yet more car-O fun last night, navigating from the A456 to Kinver Edge, but at least my wrong turn introduced me to a couple of villages I’d never been to before. 
Kingsford Forest Park is the southern (Worcestershire) end of Kinver Edge, and very nice it is too. The car park is a lovely spot – it was almost a shame to leave it and go and run!
After my exertions of the other night I decided just to do the Green and treat it like a sprint. Often I find that I’m jogging rather than running so this time I tried to remember to pick my feet up. And all went well until the last control. Since 2004 (the date on the map), several of the paths in that gridiron section have become overgrown, so it wasn’t as simple to get across as it looked…
Haden Hill is on the A459 between Halesowen and Old Hill. A park that hasn’t been used for orienteering for many years because Sandwell Council built a golf course in the middle of it.
I knew nothing about the place and had low expectations, but it turned out to be a great little area. The ex-golf-course is quite challenging, and Peter Langmaid made good use of it. (Strictly speaking half of the controls were doglegs but they’re very difficult to avoid when trying to squeeze a 5 km course into 30 hectares!) The evening sunshine, the bowls match taking place next to the carpark, Haden Hill House… the only thing missing was the Pimms! 
I had three problems: 1. I couldn’t make out the very pale colouring for “rough open” on the map – I thought Alison must’ve redefined “forest”! 2. I lost a bit of time hunting for a few controls, especially #13 and #16. I had some trouble adjusting to the map scale. (I was interested to discover that the stream I had trouble locating #16 from is the River Stour, and formed the southern boundary of Staffordshire until 1966.) 3. Although the locals in the park were mostly just bemused (especially as those of us running Blue had to run past their football match five times!) a couple of them must’ve moved some of the control markers. 
Can you spot the pentagram?
I finally got down to Sandwell Valley to plan the courses for the SEE on 28 August. Well, I’d done some armchair planning months ago, but as you might expect I’ve had to revise a few of my ideas. Thanks to the wet summer it’s a jungle out there. Getting the runners off the paths (and getting them back alive!) is a real challenge, and the brambles are even starting to sprout across the paths.
The Valley was really quiet (oops, I forgot the M5!) and I had a great three hours before the rain set in. I still need to go back, and I’ll do it on a sunny day in the summer holidays, to get a better idea of where the action is. I must mention what a boon it is having such a great map, only recently updated by Alison Sloman.
Back to Clent for a Summer Evening Event. There was a very good turnout. I ran the long course, 5km, about 380m of climb. 77 minutes, which isn’t competitive (the best time was 45 minutes), but it was good training. I enjoyed Charlie Nelson’s course, which avoided most of the bracken (except for getting in and out of control 13) and took me on a lovely tour of a lovely area. The weather stayed fine too, which was quite a shock! I got a bit distracted on #2 and managed to run right past it, while on #6 and #8 I committed my usual sin of turning back just as I was about to spike the control…
The map we were using is dated 2005 and there did seem to be quite a few discrepancies. Areas change so fast, it’s quite a headache for the mappers!
While out on the course I ran into (not quite literally) Tamsin Mosse from the National Trust, who was visiting the event to find out what we’re up to. We run on several National Trust areas, and we have permanent courses on some of them too, so it’s important to have good relations. Apparently there’ll be an orienteering component at an NT event planned at Clent on the weekend of 16/17 August, but I can’t find a webpage about it to link to at the moment.
(Now that the results are up, I see I was lastish on my course but if I’d run the shorter course I’d've been in the top three…)
After the disappointment of the Seven Pools Run I wanted to try another cross-country race, and the Himley 5k seemed ideal. And then when I discovered that the men’s race wasn’t starting till 7.45, I knew I could also go to the orienteering event at Sedgley Hall Farm beforehand. This small area (along with some others) was mapped for Dudley Council back in 1987, and Barry, tonight’s organiser, claims that this was the club’s first event there for 21 years. Neat. And we used Terry Foxton’s original map, which was misleading, but we all knew it would be! Most of what was orange or yellow on the map was very difficult to run, and it was a real puzzle how to get in to some of the controls. In one mad attempt I climbed up a vertical streambank and fought my way out through the brambles and goosegrass at the top. Frustrating but fun…
Spot the Sofa Competition: a prize for the first person to work out (or guess) where the sofa is. (Those of you who ran in the event are excluded from entering!)
My time of 43 minutes for 3.6 k was nothing to write home about, but it was a good thing that I’d had to stop a few times – it meant I hadn’t taken too much out of myself before the challenge ahead… Best wishes, by the way, to Rob Vickers, who suffered a cranial blessure thanks to an unscheduled anterior-postern rendezvous. (He bumped his head on a gate.) I hope he’s back from the hospital and okay.
Russ returns 
Adrian awaits
At 7 o’clock I parked up at Himley Hall just in time to see the women set off. They were led home by two teenagers from Halesowen ACC (nos. 55 & 56 in the big pic) in a time of around 19 minutes. I don’t know who won my race – but I know my time was 23:27. (It was around 11:15 at halfway.) My strategy was to start fast and then accelerate (!) but that was easier said than done. I did keep running all the way though, and was able to overtake a couple of guys on the run-in.
Because of the wet ground, and to give extra support to my legs, I wore my O shoes. At about a quarter distance I had a short bout of wobbly kneecap but it settled down. I’ve still got the crepitus, but otherwise my knee seems to be happy again.
#15
By local standards Lickey is a great area so I couldn’t really miss this. And the weather was perfect too – I love orienteering in the summer rain. I thought about running the long course, but because I’d have to wait for a map, and I wanted to get back to watch the football, I stuck to the medium, 3.7 km. Charlie Nelson was encouraging me to change my mind, worried that I’d beat his time, and, sorry Charlie, I think I did! But both of us trailed in the wake of the indomitable C. Spears, esq.
My time was 55.45. Thanks to John Pearson for an excellent course. I don’t know if he received any complaints about the way he kind of hid a few of the controls, but I was happy enough – I found them! My only (navigating) error was at the third control, in a reentrant. I found the right one, but not wanting to risk running up it, I retreated to check some other very shallow reentrants. My other error was wearing my contacts. I thought I’d try them one more time, but it was hopeless: I was constantly stopping to squint at the map.
At my relatively young age* I suppose I ought to run the long course more often. It’s quite a step up though. On a good evening I can win the medium course but I don’t stand a chance on the Long against the likes of Chris, John, Dave et al. And there’s the time pressure: if I get started after 7, I might not be back till quarter to 9. It’s midsummer but it was quite dark in the woods even at 8 pm.
Route: 
*SIgn of not being as young as I once was: I can’t remember hitting my leg on anything, so why is my calf throbbing?
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