A story of over confidence and not learning from my mistakes.
Full of bullish confidence after a hard fell race at Cromford on Wednesday, I was ready to push hard at a friendly, non-league orienteering event on Saturday. I met up with a few mates there including JP who I beat by 5 mins at Cromford. I was hoping that my speed would balance out his higher navigation skills and orienteering experience to beat him again. These events are super slick and registration is a breeze, and all the information is enthusiastically given by the volunteers and marshals.
The four of us head off to the start point, cleared our dibbers, and line up in the starting pens. TH went off first and I was second. This was quite handy as TH is pretty good at navigating, so I broke rule 1 of the orienteering hand book. 'Don't follow other people' (they probably are going somewhere different). Anyway I watched TH pick his route and jog off. After a minute had passed I dibbed the start control, grabbed the map and quickly found my self on the map, and confirmed that TH had gone the right way and followed his path.
The first control was pretty easy to find and the route to the second was pretty obvious too. As I approached control 2 I had already made up the minute gap on TH. I took a slightly different route to control 3, and again reached it slightly after him. After consulting the map I decided on a direct route to number 4 and ignore the path around 'woodland fight' section. Bad Idea. I ended up crawling through a thick hawthorn hedge, dropping my sunglasses and then struggling through a meadow with grass and wild flowers up to my chest. This was a much slower and more painful route.
I then took a less direct but much quicker route to control 5, and then hacked through another meadow to a wide path ready to get control 6. It all went horribly wrong here, it was only 300 metres from control 5 to control 6 (as the crow flies) but I went off in the wrong direction trying to find a break in a high fence (that I didn't need to cross) I went round and round in circles trying to get a fix on where I was on the map to try and work out a bearing to the control. But I just compounded my issues by running faster in the wrong direction, rather than settling down and calmly reading the map properly and getting sorted. Luckily I was in good company, with JP and KL both struggling blindly. We all started to converge on the same point and then realised we were, finally, in the right area. A shout from KL and we all raced over and dibbed the dastardly number 6. I then rushed off to get back to a known path on the map to re orientate and settle.
I learnt NOTHING from the 20 minute nightmare and went off with gusto and stupidity, and went flying past the the path I need to take and ended up completly off the map fighting though grasses at head height, fences, marshland before getting back on track, and dibbing control 7. Looking at the map life seemed a lot easier, with less choices to make, and slightly simpler terrain. I even managed to open up the legs and get some real running in also. I even made some cracking navigation decisions, going longer but on more accessible path. After a bit of trouble finding the final control. It was a blistering sprint to the finish.
I finished in just over an hour, with my legs, and arms covered in scratches, bites, nettle stings, all glowing red with nice swollen white bits too. I must invest in some gaiters, and take some anti-histamines later too It was a valuable lesson in the perils over confidence and the need pick a route carefully!
Strava: (Didn't hit start until I had found the 3rd control - Doh!)
Thanks to
www.dvo.org.uk
Kit:
Shoes: Salomon Fellraisers
Socks: Decathlon running socks
Shorts: nike Dryfit running shorts
Top: Mudstacle Running Vest
Watch: Polar RC3 GPS (not used for any kind of navigation)
Extra Kit: Generic Flat base Compass, Seemless scarf worn as a sweat band on wrist.
Full of bullish confidence after a hard fell race at Cromford on Wednesday, I was ready to push hard at a friendly, non-league orienteering event on Saturday. I met up with a few mates there including JP who I beat by 5 mins at Cromford. I was hoping that my speed would balance out his higher navigation skills and orienteering experience to beat him again. These events are super slick and registration is a breeze, and all the information is enthusiastically given by the volunteers and marshals.
The four of us head off to the start point, cleared our dibbers, and line up in the starting pens. TH went off first and I was second. This was quite handy as TH is pretty good at navigating, so I broke rule 1 of the orienteering hand book. 'Don't follow other people' (they probably are going somewhere different). Anyway I watched TH pick his route and jog off. After a minute had passed I dibbed the start control, grabbed the map and quickly found my self on the map, and confirmed that TH had gone the right way and followed his path.
The first control was pretty easy to find and the route to the second was pretty obvious too. As I approached control 2 I had already made up the minute gap on TH. I took a slightly different route to control 3, and again reached it slightly after him. After consulting the map I decided on a direct route to number 4 and ignore the path around 'woodland fight' section. Bad Idea. I ended up crawling through a thick hawthorn hedge, dropping my sunglasses and then struggling through a meadow with grass and wild flowers up to my chest. This was a much slower and more painful route.
I learnt NOTHING from the 20 minute nightmare and went off with gusto and stupidity, and went flying past the the path I need to take and ended up completly off the map fighting though grasses at head height, fences, marshland before getting back on track, and dibbing control 7. Looking at the map life seemed a lot easier, with less choices to make, and slightly simpler terrain. I even managed to open up the legs and get some real running in also. I even made some cracking navigation decisions, going longer but on more accessible path. After a bit of trouble finding the final control. It was a blistering sprint to the finish.
I finished in just over an hour, with my legs, and arms covered in scratches, bites, nettle stings, all glowing red with nice swollen white bits too. I must invest in some gaiters, and take some anti-histamines later too It was a valuable lesson in the perils over confidence and the need pick a route carefully!
Strava: (Didn't hit start until I had found the 3rd control - Doh!)
Thanks to
www.dvo.org.uk
Kit:
Shoes: Salomon Fellraisers
Socks: Decathlon running socks
Shorts: nike Dryfit running shorts
Top: Mudstacle Running Vest
Watch: Polar RC3 GPS (not used for any kind of navigation)
Extra Kit: Generic Flat base Compass, Seemless scarf worn as a sweat band on wrist.
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