SOG Local Event – Goodwood
The first of this season’s “Southdown Orienteers Gallopen (League)” events (known, for obvious reasons as “SOGs”) was at Goodwood Country Park, north of Chichester.
This is a narrow area of varied woodland on the chalk downs, much of which is fairly open without too much undergrowth and with lots of paths and tracks. It adjoins the Goodwood race track so there is the opportunity for a couple of straight runs across the grass car parks. This means that a well planned course, like today’s, will require all sorts of skills: fast easy running, track runs, going straight through forest and choosing routes. As we arrived, the sun came out and the day was soon warm (20C) and very humid, with the overnight mist dissolving in the sunshine before we arrived.
I was fairly pleased with my run, except for one disastrous control. The first couple of controls took us straight off the tracks and through the forest – quite a shock after the summer park-o events. There were then plenty of choices – run round the tracks or go straight – I did both at various times.
I completely messed up control 5. I went straight aiming to pick up a clear path later on. I landed on the path, which was heading in the right way and followed it until I could see an electricity line ahead, exactly where I expected it. At this point there should have been another path joining from the left, but there was not. The woods were fairly brashed (covered with cut branches) and I wondered if the path was not very visible. It did not feel quite right though but this did not stop me heading into the woods towards where I thought the control should be, trying again and then simply scratching my head until I realised I must have hit a parallel path and that I was “out of bounds” which was why this path was not on the map. I was able to relocate quickly once I realised, but ten minutes had gone.
Things went fairly smoothly after that until control 10, which was in a deep pit by a rootstock and invisible until you hit it straight on which took me a couple of tries. I probably lost a minute or two here.
I was back in 55 minutes and finished 24th (out of 43). Without the mistakes it would have been a very reasonable 45 minutes (and a place in the high teens) so my speed across the ground was pleasing. I felt fitter than I have done for ages and was able to run through the forest and across rough open much more consistently than has been the case and in general I felt pretty good. Just a matter of working on the navigation.