SO Regional Event – Oldhouse Warren
It was a perfect day for orienteering today. The sun was shining , it has not rained for a few days and it was pleasantly warm but there was a pleasant breeze. Oldhouse Warren, near Crawley, has an area of unstructured ancient woodland, with amazing old oak trees, and a compartmentalised area of younger, mostly conifer, forest with occasional ancient oaks. The whole area is run through with lovely streams, often at the bottom of very steep sided valleys.
The course I ran used this terrain very well. This first control was in a re-entrant off a stream valley then a run down the valley to find a stream junction then into featureless forest looking for a very subtle ruined fence that led me into a depression before crossing through the middle of lots of compartments and finally lots of controls in very complex terrain along two streams.
My run was reasonable, without any complete disasters, but lots of minor errors. I was slow to get going, taking 18 minutes to get to control three. I sped up through the compartments, then slowed down towards the end. I made a big parallel error at 12 going up the wrong stream – how often do you get two steep-sided depressions each with a stream on its left? I probably lost four minutes there. I also continued my very bad habit of making a mess of one of the last controls – this time the penultimate one. I convinced myself that I had gone too far, spent time looking around, decided to go a bit further and found the control! Another four minutes lost. Fitness was a problem again – I felt leaden and was very slow over the ground.
I was back in 76 minutes for 4.7km on M45S – not a great time by any stretch of the imagination – about 143% of the winning time. There are times I wonder why I do this sport. I did enjoy this though: the course was just the right mix of physical challenge and mental puzzle and it was a fantastic early spring day to be out in the wild.
UPDATE: The results are in. I was not surprised to be last in M45S but analysing the results was interesting to say the least. Everything good and bad about the run was about navigation. When I was accurate, I was well up with the field for speed across the ground, at least up until the last control or two. I could have been third or fourth except for the mistakes I made at controls 3, 12 and 15, where I knew I was going wrong. The reality was different to what I thought. I was blaming fitness (which is an issue) but this was not the deciding factor – on several controls I was faster than most of the field (I was third on four controls) but I lost time in four to seven minute “chunks” where I went awry on the navigation. If I want to be a better orienteer I need to navigate better – the basic speed over the ground really has improved, even if there is more to do here too.