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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!
The first West Midlands event of the autumn, and the weather wasn’t bad at all. After weeks of seemingly endless rain, it was a surprise to spend most of my run under a warm, sunny sky. It was less of a surprise that my knee gave way again – I’d given it two weeks’ rest but the one-k leg in the middle of the Blue course did for it. 80 minutes wasn’t the worst time, but I should’ve come 20th rather than 40th.
Anyway, the injury will make me prioritise organising rather than running. And it’s not such a bad thing, slow orienteering. After a bad run, Margaret Keeling had slowed down to my limping pace and we took part in an impromptu Slow-O Challenge from control 12 to the finish: I think we bagged three controls each, with the seventh one being taken in mid-air since it was being carried by a control collector!
RouteGadget (Not yet possible to add courses to the map)
How about another little game? The challenge is that each West Midlands event should have more participants than the previous one. Therefore we need to get more than 250 to Croft Castle on Sunday.
Up to Cannock Chase for a Chasers evening event – part of their “Domination” series, which pits members against each other over a range of different types of events. Tonight was the “classic” race, i.e. a longish normal run. I covered the 6.2 km in 61:26, which I was very happy with, even though the winning time was 37:16! And it wouldn’t've been a Chasers event if it hadn’t included the following features: a bingo control (#4), a loooong run in the middle of the course (about a mile!) and a climb to the finish… 
It was a good course though, with SI punching, and it was FREE! ::Applause:: On the way there I’d been concerned about the weather – it threw it down – but by the time it arrived it was dry and I was pretty parched by the end of my run.
Afterwards I met Doug Peel and I discovered that Dave Peel is going to map Barr Beacon and Pelsall Wood, so I’m looking forward to going to (or planning?) events in those (small) areas in the next year or so.
I’ve finally done my first sprint event! Of course it’s just a glorified night street event–glorified in the sense that there’s a proper map and SI punching–but it was fun. I combined the event with visiting some friends in the city, and their excellent food was sitting rather heavily in my stomach as I attacked this course.
The reaction of the locals was interesting. Soon after I started a guy shouted out of his car window at me to ask what was going on, and towards the end of the race a police car drove slowly past me. The local kids by controls 209 and 214 were good natured, and I think altotgether we created some interest among the inhabitants of Darwin Park.
My run was okay; the only mistake I made, apart from a few questionable route choices, was running a little way back up the red line towards #6 after dibbing #7. The area, being a new housing estate, was suitable for the event, but perhaps a bit on the easy side, there being few shortcuts between the roads. Most of the difficulty, really, is introduced by having to interpret a very detailed map.
The map’s an interesting fish. There’s no BOF number, no mention of the OS or other base survey, and no mention of mapping software. I have an image of the Barnbys putting their theodolite in the car after work every evening!
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.
Up to Cannock Chase for the West Midlands Relays. Not a huge turnout, but a good atmosphere. And a run-in that will go down in O lore as one of the toughest ever. The last 200 metres was straight up hill – 50 metres of climb!
I was running in an Ad Hoc team with George Chambers and Julian Green and we came a respectable third. My time was 44 minutes for 3.1 km, which I was pleased with, considering there were five climbs altogether. Another Harlequins team, Hoc Chocolate, came first. Well done, guys! here they are, Lester, Nigel and Laura:
Congratulations also to the Hoctegenarians, Colin, Barry and John for winning the men’s Supervets contest. This year’s Men’s Open Champions are Michael Barnby, Mikey Hopkins and Iain Stamp of Walton Chasers, who completed the 16 km in 118 minutes.
My route:
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