SOG Local Event – Rivers Wood, Balcombe
After a wet and windy night I wondered what the morning would bring, but it was a lovely day to drive into the “High Weald” – the area of sandstone hills that runs east-west between the South and North Downs. It was calm and not raining, and gentle sun broke through just as we were preparing to run. It was mild but not warm and perfect for late October.
I enjoyed this course. Rivers Wood is compact and has a “proper” river (The Sussex Ouse) bounding its north and east edges. Inside the wood there are lots of parallel rides, and paths that are almost as wide as the rides, so there is plenty of opportunity for parallel errors or simply becoming very confused. The woodland itself has almost everything from mature plantations very easy to run in one direction, to very dense conifers and a great deal of scratchy brambly undergrowth in places. As the name suggests, there are quite a number of water features, but despite the rain, it was not too wet underfoot.
Vince Joyce had planned an interesting course, with lots of route choice, a great shape so you were having to make significant changes of direction at many controls, good variety of long and short legs and forcing you to use a whole range of navigation techniques.
I was reasonably pleased with my run. I navigated pretty well but not very accurately overall. I went past one control and often found the circle quickly but then took a little while to pin down the flag. On one long leg I made what should have been a sensible route choice, but came unstuck. I realised that I had drifted a little to the right of an indistinct path, but as I knew the control was on the other side of a pasture that stretched wide in front of me, but not yet in sight, I figured I should take a rough bearing and go straight, knowing I could not miss the field. That was true, but I ran into undergrowth and denser forest that slowed me right down, and made me doubt where I was, which slowed me down even more.
From this one big error, and just being a little inaccurate elsewhere, I lost 10 or 12 minutes finishing on 70 minutes in all. I would have been pleased with any time under an hour! Fitness wise, things were again better than they have been. I ran pretty well continuously – only walking up one hill and not stopping at all – but I was very slow and tired on the second half of the course and my legs were like lead over the last couple of controls, where my navigation was spot-on.