Suffice to say today's orienteering did not go to the plan. I was a bit rubbish today, making a few errors here and there and a particularly bad one to control four - the sad part on that one was I didn't have the conviction to push on just another 25m or so and ended up going for a bit of a wander... ho hum.
I drove over to Speculation and parked the van before embarking on my five mile jog over to Bracelands. I felt quite spritely, even managing to climb the steep sections without too much puffing and panting. Definitely getting fitter.
I arrived early-ish to the orienteering, registered and headed out. It looked quite a posh event with a few stalls and wot nots set up at the registration area. Also looked like a pretty good field assembled - and by that I mean there seemed plenty of young blood as compared to the normal events where it's heavily loaded by us old farts.
For a Brown it was shorter than normal on account of there being a lot of ascent - but I think I managed to bump up the distance to something more in keeping with a brown course. I started off okay but took my eye off the ball on the way to four. I just didn't engage brain and pause for a second to consider things. So after doing a lap of honour (or two) I finally got it - but not before I'd gone a right pearler. Quite literally head over heels - but I know how to fall. I rolled over on my head and shoulder and then as soon as my feet touched the ground I was up with the momentum, hardly breaking step.
With four finally achieved the rest went okay although I think my route choice on a couple of the long controls was far from optimal. I finished though - even if I was sitting pretty in last spot. In my defence there were 31 still out there on the course and all but two of the finishers were younger than me - and I'm rubbish at orienteering - and I'm slow - and I'm old - but not bald (for now at least) - and, well I can't think up any more excuses. Anyway, hopefully somebody will manage to knock me off last spot by the end of play, please, someone, anyone?
In all I measured it at 10.3km with 385mm ascent and with my 7.9km run there and then 7.4km run back, I managed to clock up a healthy 25.6km with a total ascent of 630m so not too bad a days training in the grand scheme of things.
I drove over to Speculation and parked the van before embarking on my five mile jog over to Bracelands. I felt quite spritely, even managing to climb the steep sections without too much puffing and panting. Definitely getting fitter.
I arrived early-ish to the orienteering, registered and headed out. It looked quite a posh event with a few stalls and wot nots set up at the registration area. Also looked like a pretty good field assembled - and by that I mean there seemed plenty of young blood as compared to the normal events where it's heavily loaded by us old farts.
For a Brown it was shorter than normal on account of there being a lot of ascent - but I think I managed to bump up the distance to something more in keeping with a brown course. I started off okay but took my eye off the ball on the way to four. I just didn't engage brain and pause for a second to consider things. So after doing a lap of honour (or two) I finally got it - but not before I'd gone a right pearler. Quite literally head over heels - but I know how to fall. I rolled over on my head and shoulder and then as soon as my feet touched the ground I was up with the momentum, hardly breaking step.
With four finally achieved the rest went okay although I think my route choice on a couple of the long controls was far from optimal. I finished though - even if I was sitting pretty in last spot. In my defence there were 31 still out there on the course and all but two of the finishers were younger than me - and I'm rubbish at orienteering - and I'm slow - and I'm old - but not bald (for now at least) - and, well I can't think up any more excuses. Anyway, hopefully somebody will manage to knock me off last spot by the end of play, please, someone, anyone?
In all I measured it at 10.3km with 385mm ascent and with my 7.9km run there and then 7.4km run back, I managed to clock up a healthy 25.6km with a total ascent of 630m so not too bad a days training in the grand scheme of things.
2 comments:
Sorry to hear you struggled to find cp4, i found it no problem, just a shame it wasn't on my course !
Have you tried uploading your garmin track to routegadget on the ngoc website ?
matthew
Well, I've now managed to upload my route to routegadget - although it doesn't seem to link the gps plot to my actual stats. Operation spider crawled across the page is there in all it's glory for the other orienteers - or should that just be the orienteers because I'm not sure I qualify after that effort - to have a good chuckle over....
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