SOG Local Event – Southwater Country Park
After heavy rain overnight, it was cooler and dry for the event today. I planned an event at Southwater Country Park, near Horsham 
, a couple of years ago so I know the ground very well and was looking forward to a fairly fast run, but I also knew that I am not at my best for various reasons, including a bit of a cold.
It was fairly chilly waiting for the start but I was keen to be going. The first shock was finding some paths marked on the map blocked with piles of bramble cuttings, presumably to keep motorbikes out, but requiring a quick climb over, or a detour through the very prickly bushes. I felt fairly confident with my navigation. The problem was reading the land, rather than the map. The park used to be a clay pit (for bricks) and the vegetation has grown haphazardly. Many areas are covered with dense, short hawthorn and blackthorn: small trees or large bushes, each with razor sharp thorns. The sides of the pit are very steep indeed and the wet clay underfoot made it very slippery so that some parts were more like climbing than running. Still, I was making good progress until control 6 where I simply did not see the obvious path on the map and lost time cutting through thick trees to get to another path. I recovered fairly well, but was never as fast as I could have been.
I was back in a respectable rather than speedy 44 minutes, placed 14th and about 8 minutes behind the winner. As is traditional in the last event before Christmas, there was a mince pie and glass of mulled fruit punch waiting at the finish: I enjoyed chatting in the sunshine but it was too cold to hang around too long plus my head and several cuts on my arms were bleeding from the thorns.