Park Wood- Hailsham
Today was “SOG2″ – this one in Park Wood, Hailsham.
Autumn has arrived now. We had heavy rain yesterday evening and overnight, so the woods were damp and dripping, with a constant fall of leaves. Already there are carpets of yellow and brown beneath the larger trees. The course was very interesting. The woods were on a mixture of clay and sand, so had everything – marsh, streams, low cliffs, steep slopes and some lovely runnable forest. I felt good and went off well, keeping map contact and making quite good time through the first four controls. Then I stepped on a very marshy patch. My foot went down (about 20cm) and came up without a shoe. It took both hands and a few minutes to rescue it. There was a boardwalk there, by the stream. As I stepped on it ready to put my shoe back on, the other slid and I landed with a thump on my backside. The whole thing distracted me. I found the next control reasonably quickly and set off through the woods to find a path that would lead me to the next. A slightly wrong bearing put me on the wrong path, which I realised straight away, but I convinced myself I could take that path and work round to the next control. Then I thought I would cut across and save time, but misjudged how far along I was and was deep into very dense thicket before I knew. There was nothing for it but to fight and get very scratched. Still not realising where I was E-W (though I knew N-S) I ended up working down a path and finding myself back at the control I left. A long round trip for no purpose except that I could do it properly this time, and did – spotting the control well ahead and moving fast and direct. Otherwise things were fine, with little time lost and reasonable speed over the ground.
Without the big mistake, I would have been well within the top 20 and looking at a respectable time. With the mistake a not so respectable 27th.
Analysing split times, it is very clear that one or two mistakes per race cost me at least 10 places each time. The message is clear – become a better navigator!
Three young lads came with me from school. All finished and one did yellow in 12 minutes – compared with over 30 last time he was out.