Chris Curtis Web Site

I did an assault course today.

I was with a group from school visiting the Royal Artillery. The students did a lot of team challenges in the morning then we moved to try one of the British Army’s secret weapons – the bouncy castle assault course. This is about the same width as a “normal” bouncy castle, but about six times longer and uses the same technology with fans keeping the rubberised fabric inflated. There are two parallel tracks through the course, which involved a slalom under hoops (so you had to do it crawling on your belly), “the pyramid” – a series of horizontal tubes you had to go over – peak height about 3 metres above the floor, a series of high and low holes to go through head first, “the skittles” – a forest of vertical tubes very close together that you have to push through while brawny gunners push them about from the sides and finally a series of high and low “up and under” hurdles before a sprint back to the start. Apparently, as well as using this with visiting schoolchildren, the army use it with unfit new recruits.

It looked like a game and you had real confidence that you could do it. As everything is air-cushioned you could just “go for it” – diving through the holes and over the obstacles. It was actually the most intense workout I have had for ages. I could hardly breathe by the time I got to the end and my heart was pounding. Throwing myself over things taller than me was still extremely hard work, even if the obstables themselves were air-cushioned. The “bouncy” floor added to the work-rate. It was extremely hard to get purchase or push off. Everything happened fast, so all the effort was anaerobic exercise – which I almost never do.

Honour was satisfied. I went at the same time as a female colleague who is very fit, very light and half my age. She was about 5 metres ahead of me coming out of the course – partly because I had held back not wanting to land on her as we went throught the high and low holes, though she absolutely flew through the hurdles at the end while I was blundering about. I won the sprint though, overhauling her and beating her to the handover by a couple of metres.

I was pleased that I was not literally on my hands and knees at the end, though I could not speak for a minute or two. I was also pleased with a pretty fast recovery – with everything back to normal in less than five minutes from literally gasping for breath. My colleague and I think we were faster than any of the students too!

It was also jolly good fun – I will have to see how feasible it would be to get one!

My run today was complicated by taking a group of students and a couple of staff from my school with me. I had to go in to collect the minibus, and them, before coming past my house again to get to the event. As we were leaving school, it started to rain heavily, following rain overnight. I said it was the cold front coming through and would be stopping by the time we arrived – which turned out to be accurate, but the forest was very wet, with big puddles even on the track into the car park. The bus was sliding a little where the track was slick.

It took a little while to have everyone set up and to explain the map. There was virtually no legend on today’s map, which was fine except for the absolute beginners, of which I had several! I saw the group off , then set out myself.

I have a mild cold or virus, I think, so took it fairly easily. The forest is riddled with paths and tracks, so I played safe down to control one by staying on paths, and quite often on later controls too. Staying on the paths was encouraged by a few encounters with the undergrowth. The bracken and brambles are already rampant. I did feel like I was path-running quite a lot of the way, but felt a little fitter than usual (probably from going slower), so did not mind too much.

Apart from being a little “rough” in the approach to a few controls, I made few mistakes. Generally, I was not simplifying enough – still trying to look at every detail, which loses a great deal of time. I went past 11, which was in a shallow re-entrant and ended up in the next, rather better defined, re-entrant. Once I realised, I was pleased with the way I relocated and landed right on the control. With a couple of five minute stops to do a little coaching with the students, and a spectacular but thankfully harmless tumble I was well outside my 60 minute target.

Unusually, when I got back there was only one pair of students and none of the staff who had finished. The ones who did yellow had terrible problems with their control 9. It looked perfectly well placed to me, but many of them had taken the wrong path between 8 and 9, went parallel and went past and were quickly very lost – most realised and backtracked, but there were no obvious catching features until they hit the lane at the end of the wrong path – about 1km away. Still, they were all back safely, just as it began to rain heavily again. They had thoroughly enjoyed themselves, though it does look as if the yellow might have been a bit more of “in at the deep end” than I wanted for them. They were all keen to come again, which is the best indicator.

I missed the club’s first big training Saturday and was glad to attend this one.

I started by helping with the first exercise in a loop round Fittleworth common (near Pulborough in Sussex). There was an uphill/downhill pacing exercise between two flags. I asked people to make a visual estimate of the distance, then pace it up the hill, then down again. This would give them some idea how accurate their estimates and pacing were and whether there was need for a significant adjustment when going upslope or down, compared with the flat.

I found it an interesting exercise to watch too. Firstly, some people had wide differences between the number of paces going up or downhill, others hardly any. This seemed to be a result of the way they ran. Some people were very cautious coming down, taking lots of little steps. Others bounded downhill, moving much faster and taking many fewer steps. I am definitely in the former category – I really do not run freely through forest at the best of times and steep slopes down make me tense up even more. I spent a few of the quiet times when I had no “customers” trying to come downhill faster – trying to relax and flow rather than tense up. At other quiet times (not that there were too many of these) I watched treecreepers … creeping up trees! I do like those little brown birds.

When I was relieved from duty, I went to try one of the longer exercises on Hesworth Common (the village has two beautiful areas of common land, about 400m apart). I chose the “brown only” map – most of the features and all of the paths were removed, leaving open ground and contours as well as “earth features” to navigate by. This was not as difficult as I feared, but it did require concentration and some care. It also led to a different style of route choice. I found myself rough orienteering in broad sweeps (along the side of the hill, then across the wide clearing and it should be the re-entrant on the opposite slope) rather than looking at lots of detail and constantly checking every feature.

You can see this if you compare the two maps. The first is an extract from the “full-featured” map, the second is the “brown only” map we used today.

If I had been using the full map, I am sure I would have been using paths and spending a lot of time cross-checking the many junctions and minor, unmapped paths as well as the vegetation changes. With the map I had, I was forced to contour round the hill, looking for the re-entrant on the steep hillside facing south-east. Instead of looking at detail, I was looking at the wider flow of the terrain. This got me close more quickly, but the more detailed map would have been great for the final approach! In fact, I drifted a bit when contouring, catching the wrong slope and being led away, but when I came into a wide flat area, I knew instantly that I was wrong and was soon headed towards the steep slope. I had a mental picture of the shape of the land and where I was in it.

What I hope to take away from the exercise is a determination to be more careful in deciding what aspects of the map to use when. Instead of looking at everything, I need to simplify. When rough orienteering, I need to look at the big features and when fine orienteering, the detail. It is almost as if the map is in “layers” – the basic shape of the land – shown in brown contours and earth features – are the foundation. Vegetation, paths and other features are overlaid on the foundation. There are times I should be looking at the foundation layer and others when the higher layers become more important.

In all, a thoroughly worthwhile morning. Very friendly and relaxed with a chance to put some more names to faces and a chance to chat and think about orienteering techniques. The beauty of the commons, with their small trees, heather and amazing views was a bonus. Tim Bartlett, who organised it, deserves a great deal of thanks.

I downloaded and upgraded this site to the latest version of WordPress 1.5.1. The upgrade was very easy (just one thing broke – the “users online” plugin and I fixed that in seconds). All seems to be working and it does seem to be faster than before.

My first orienteering event was at Sheffield Forest, where I ran orange and came second, so I was keen to try a green course here. This Sheffield is near Nutley in Sussex – not in Yorkshire. The forest is unusual for the south-east in having rock outcrops and being tangled and wild rather than carefully managed.

It was a lovely morning, after rain overnight. It was sunny, with brilliant white clouds that threatened showers later, and there was a cool breeze. I made a mistake while copying the map, but fortunately spotted it this time and corrected it right away.

The early part of the course went well enough. I was being careful with my ankle but it seemed OK and I felt I was making progress. I came off the path too early for control 6 and ended up hitting the fence near the ornamental lakes that marked the edge of “out of bounds”. I decided to go along the fence, the end of which would give me a good attack point for the control. This should have been good navigation, having made the mistake, but it put me into some difficult terrain, with lots of undergrowth and brashings which was very slow.

The course then headed into some rare terrain for South-East England, with very steep slopes, covered in dense and chaotic pine and spruce, yew and holly, topped with rock outcrops. This is the first time I have run on a map which has boulders, bare rock and rock cliffs marked. I found the first control at a cliff foot easily, and the next on the plateau on top, then instead of following the obvious valley down to the next control at a cliff foot I went over the edge of the plateau and had to work painstakingly along lots of very similar crags to find the one I wanted. More time lost.

I got my act back together for a bit, then I miscalculated a distance looking for a control along a path, and came well to the right on a bearing. In short, I was never really lost, and made reasonable rather than brilliant route choices, but did not execute well. My mind was not really focused and it was quite hard to read the forest to decide when to go straight and when to go round. I found the terrain difficult to move through. Sheffield Forest is not commercially managed. Large parts are particularly tangled, with fallen trees and saplings intertwined, lots of old bracken and new brambles and some, rather than many, truly runnable areas. There are some very deep valleys, large marshes and very sharp slopes too. I found it quite physical – I came home with a 2cm gash on my neck and a long gash and bruise on my arm, as well as numerous scratches and bruises.

This character showed in the times. I was very slow (and should really have been 20 – 30 minutes quicker if I had concentrated) but still came 31st out of 40+ runners. I enjoyed the terrain, though it was often quite hard work. I particularly liked the deep valleys (see photo above) and I loved the rocks – if I had time I would have to have done some bouldering.

This was a very mixed day for me, with some things good and some bad, for various reasons.

I had taken a minibus-full of keen juniors with me to help at the event and to have a run later, having answered frantic pleas for help a few weeks ago. We arrived around 9:30am and things were already in action, with World Cup athletes busily starting. It was a great arena – a big field sloping down towards the woods, next to which were the start and finish and the big screen showing a great spectator control. We had a nice welcome from one of the organisers, who was a friend of some friends, and who was particularly welcoming to the juniors, none of whom had orienteered before.

We reported to enquiries, after talking to a few of the organisers on the way who mostly seemed puzzled about why we would want to be there. I was glad to find our contact who was expecting us and was very welcoming. She explained that things were in a bit of a lull, helpwise, as the world cup event had started and things were ticking along. She tried to get some of the kids involved in such things as handing water to world cup finishers and such like, but she and we had a telling off from the red-jacketed army who were hanging around the elite event, to the effect that kids could not be allowed anywhere near the world cup, that the elite athletes could only be tended by elite helpers and the like. We agreed to hang around a bit and see if something came up. This was not a good feeling, especially as I had changed our original plan to come along late morning, because I had had an email saying that they were desperate for help with the world cup – I had re-arranged all sorts of things to get there by 9:30 and we simply were not needed.

You can guess what happened next – it started to rain: dense, steady, cold and miserable.

Still, we enjoyed watching the world cup in action. We went up to the spectator control and mingled with a few spectators and a lot of the World Cup athletes (who were allowed up to the control before their runs) including the awesome Thierry Georgiou who stood on his own quietly contemplating the forest and ignoring the athletes who rushed past to punch the control. The students tried to shelter in and under a holly tree, but nowhere was dry. We went back to the run-in and watched Thierry and Simone Niggli, quietly wandering around watching the run-in. (The photo shows Thierry)

On the suggestion of my club captain, we had some fun trying to put a tent up (10 kids, two teachers and a lot of chaos) until we realised that the frame and tent-canvas we had did not match. It took our minds off the rain for a while, and of course, made the rain stop.

In the end, we were not needed for any tasks at all. There were hundreds of club members there who had cornered all the “jobs” and did not need a bunch of kids doing stuff. As seems all too common in orienteering, few of them had told the organisers they were coming until the last minute, hence the frantic pleas for help. Our contact found me and apologised and understood the irritation I was feeling, which did make things a bit better. We organised runs for the kids and fixed a start time on M45S for me. That part of the arrangements worked brilliantly, with friendly, helpful people looking after the entries without fuss and encouraging the kids.

It was good fun explaining to the students how the dibbers worked, what control descriptions were and so on. We managed to get some maps too and had a quick and dirty briefing before taking them to the start and delivering them into the “boxes” preparing for their start times. That was good too, with the starters taking excellent care of the beginners, making sure they got the right maps and so on, despite the large number of people starting and other orienteers around them being really supportive. That was one of the high spots of the day.

I went off on my run. The ups and downs had wrecked my concentration and I tried too hard on control 1 – looking at too much detail too early. Control two was in very vague and confusing forest and I went all around before I realised which of several parallel valleys it was in. I found the navigation very hard – with enormously detailed terrain and map, with confusing parallels all over the place. My eye finally “came in” on my second attempt to go from 3 to 4 and the terrain started to make more sense. I was pleased with controls 5 to 8, and my split times were actually moderately respectable (i.e. not the slowest in the field!). These were all well-hidden in extremely complex, technical terrain (ancient mine-workings) and I was delighted with my confident and clean navigation.

Things went horribly wrong on the way to control nine. Firstly, I seemed to lose contact with the map and terrain. I think I had been lulled into a false sense of security by a few good controls and left 8 without a clear plan of attack and did not keep tight map contact. In that terrain, it was a disaster. I tried to relocate three times, but as the area was marked as complex contours under undergrowth with lots of randomly placed, similar sized thickets, this was always going to be a challenge. I finally headed onto a nice clear path – which I could easily identify on the map but did not know how far along I was. I set out to find the next junction for a secure relocation and three steps along the nice flat path I turned my left ankle right over. Severe pain, then relief that nothing seemed to be broken, then more relief when I found it would take my weight, then very quickly realising that there was no way I could run even a step on it. Given I was already way down in time, and I had not even found the control yet, there was no choice but to pick up my safety bearing and start walking gently back to retire. The kids cheering me to sprint down the run-in did not help, but they were sympathetic when they saw the limp!

The students had enjoyed their experience of orienteering. They did not go away quite as elated as the ones I took to the opening day (too much hanging around wet for that) but they were impressed with the sport and keen to have another go.

Now, a day later, the ankle is sore, but I do not think I did anything serious. It is not visibly swollen and I have been able to walk on it all day (I have it strapped). It gives the odd twinge or throb but seems to be moving smoothly and in all appropriate directions. It is about the fourth time I have done this with the same ankle, always on flat surfaces, so I am beginning to think that I might have a bit of a weakness, and that strapping it before running might be sensible.

So a very mixed experience all round. In terms of the event, a lot of very smooth organisation, welcoming and helpful people and great atmosphere along with a little of the opposite. In terms of my run, enough good controls to show that I can (at least in theory) be competitive in my age group in what must be some of the most demanding and technical terrain anywhere and the fantastic sense of achievement when it goes right, along with the humbling experience that even the slightest lapse in concentration will be severely punished and the realisation that I have SO much still to learn.

I am a long-time Palm user, on my third machine, a Tungsten T3. I use it many times a day, every day, for all sorts of things.

I have been trying fitaly – a special “keyboard” that replaces graffiti – the “handwriting” recognition system on the Palm. I was dubious at first, but I have purchased it. I found I was entering more text, more quickly and more accurately. Since one of the things I use the Palm for is writing and editing documents this is a big plus. The “keyboard” is designed for “one finger” or in this case one stylus use and groups letters together accordingly. I am still learning, but already thinking in some of the common letter combinations which makes writing very much faster than graffiti ever was.