Saturdays Ringwood event was a big one- maybe putting Urbans in the centre of towns is the way to get more entries! WSX had some good results out of the whole field with 9 of us racing , notably Julies 1st on the W65 out of the 13 in that age group. Great time had by all on another local area.
Sunday the 3rd Relay for the S.W was held and as far as I can make out WSX came 2nd just 27 seconds down on the rest of the groups – There was 15 teams which is easily the biggest relay so far , the Crickmores went along and did the club proud again. Roger says ” On Sunday the Roger, Tracy and James Crickmore headed over to Taunton to take part in the Quantock Orienteers Relay. It was a rather strange format in which team members run two or three courses but had to download, clear and then restart between each course with the time taken to do so included in the overall total. Nobody seemed to have considered what happened if there was ever a problem at download , which at one point there was causing impatient runners having to queue up for it. James was flying clocking the fastest time on each of the three courses he ran, and was well backed up by Roger and Tracy enabling the Wessex Raiders to come in second out of 15 teams, less than 30 sec behind the the winning Quantock team”
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Peter was in Hungary and sent this report and photo
“This Saturday I have taken part in the Hungarian Night Orienteering Championships, organised just outside of Budapest near the town of Pomáz. I was really looking forward to this and despite my less-than perfect physical shape (not much running these days as being a young father certainly diverts time away from training) I have quite fancied my chances for a good result – there are much less night racing in Hungary than in the UK during the winter.
The weather seemed to be a tale of mixed fortunes – 30+ degrees during the day is not something any runner would be looking forward to, so a bit of rain would help in that aspect… well we have got that in buckets, a summer downpour that totally soaked me in about 20 seconds! Again, being based in Britain one could claim I had the advantage with all the experience of frequent rainy days and nights being out in the forest, relative to that my fellow hungarian competitors are exposed to. On the other had, this was quite the downpour, and exposed my worsening eyesight – I am probably at the verge of needing glasses, so for now it meant my magnifier was useless and I often had to stop to read the map detail – which was certainly required if you glance at our course!
With that in mind, I set off and found the course well planned, thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience, despite a few places where the map was frustratingly underestimating the green which meant I picked routes expecting to go through areas that was much slower than they were pictured on the map. Even with that, I have kept my error telly relatively low for the most part. I enjoyed the changes of terrain which forced one to change orienteering technique, kept on on their toes and I also enjoyed fighting through the elements and most of the time succeeding finding the stuff I was expecting on the map. That lasted up until the 14th control, where despite my careful compass bearing, I ended up in a place where the control wasn’t and I found it very difficult to place where I was. After about 10 minutes I finally bailed out to a path crossing where to my amazement I was was off – at least I was able to correct and find the control and set off for the rest of the course. I was then first very surprised to have been told that I missed a control – however in hindsight it all made perfect sense as to why I could not find the 14th control: I have lost concentration for a few seconds at the 12th control (this was the first control in this new, fast area where I needed to push the running) and skipped the map reading onto control 13 which I have not executed yet. So I ran from control 12 as if I was already at control 13. All the worse that my printout showed I was leading up until that point…
So much to learn here, after a first DQ after a number of years with a few seconds of lost concentration – and despite that, I oddly felt quite happy with most of my evening. Ah, the contradictions in Orienteering!”
Can you imagine this? at night. only for the headstrong.
Come to tuesday training, youll be better afterwards. Jason
Posted on Mon, 24th June 2019 by Jason Falconer
