Month: September 2009

It was whilst wandering round between the showers in a Maize Maze near Cambridge with some friends a couple of months ago that Cath came up with the idea of Maize Maze Orienteering. There are Maize Mazes up & down the country set up by entrepreneurial farmers looking for an alternative income to crops. Some mazes are quite straightforward, others are more tricky and there are a number of professionals who design the maizes for the farmers, too. The mazes also provide rudimentary maps which can act as a base map for foot orienteering.
Tuesday was the ‘warm up’ and ‘shakedown’ event before a full blown event in a few weeks time. Walton Chasers runs a Domination series throughout the summer for its club members. It takes the form of a league that covers all the main disciplines of Orienteering : Sprint, Score, Classic, Cross Country Running. This years sprint was the Maize Maze.
I started really well and was very pleased with the way I was running, however then came a lesson in concentration. I discovered a SI box that was programed incorrectly and after running back to the finish with it I then blew the next 4 controls finally accidentally missed two out – Muppet.

Many were sceptical about this novel new form of orienteering but everyone can back saying it was one of the most intense orienteering experiences they had ever done.
see http://www.maize-maze.com/ for your nearest Maize maze, which are normally also a great family day out !

The ‘real’ event is on the 3rd OCT – see advert right

A chance comment by Mark Garside reminded me on Saturday night that on Sunday there was a novel event involving a Sprint and a Middle race on the same area, organised by Adrian Bailey. Having enjoyed the sprint action in Taunton I informed Cath at midnight when she got back from her Coldplay concert that we would all be up early to travel down to Wombourne, just south of Wolverhampton, she was mightily impressed !
The organiser was back from his antics on the empty plynth in Trafalger Sqaure and put on a great days orienteering. First was a sprint, well short race really but it was fun tearing round the parkland surrounding Himley Hall. I ran clean except for #13 which had  an interesting control description of copse inside ! Everybody lost time(me about 2.5 mins) so not a huge problem but not a control site I would have used.  A quick drink and a muffin from the cafe onsite and we were ready for the 2km walk over to Baggeridge Country Park where the middle race was being held. This rough sort of country park is exactly the sort of thing I generally avoid in West Midland foot Orienteering but it was fine for a middle race. The planner packed 24 controls into the 6.0km and other than bashing my leg at one point I had a really good run only losing time on #12 after checking to see if blood was pouring from the place on my leg that hurt so much ( should be a nice bruise there in the morning) put me off. So Cath and Holly are Black Country Champions (W10 and W35) and we had a great morning out on a simply organised local event, exactly what we need lots more of, its just a shame it was not as well attended as it should have been.

When the chap who got me into the sport I love nearly 30 years ago, Roger Craddock my old Physics teacher, gave me a ring asking a favour I was delighted to say yes and help out Quantock Orienteers. As a junior QO didn’t really exist and I was a member of Devon OC growing up. QO are now thriving and have an awards for all grant which they have spent on Sportident kit and promotion via a series of town/street/park races this autumn.

Staying with my parents I first spent Friday evening teaching all the QO committee and a Devon member all about Sportident use and in particular AutoDownload the event software. It went very well and I think gave them the confidence to move forward into bigger events with it now.

The sunny Saturday afternoon saw my second duty , playing the celebrity with GB squad top on posing for the camera with QOs grant check for the local paper. I also helped them with any issues they had with there first use of AutoDownload.
I blasted round the Vivary park map courses which all took approx 2-4 mins each before, after much chatting with another old teacher (John Fisher who taught me to canoe and introduced me to AutoCAD, now part of my job,  in 1989) and several oreinteers I’d not seen for ages, I thought i’d better have a go at the main ‘sprint’ course.
I knew someone had done 22 mins so I decided I would like to try and break 20. I stormed off only to lose perhaps 30 secs on #1 as the flag had been nicked, I was about to comeback and report it and then start again when I found the SI unit still on its wire. On the way to #7 I realised I had gone out a bit too hard and eased back a little but ran the rest clean and drew a few strange looks from the locals as I flew around the residential area and thoroughly enjoyed the race.  I love this sort of simple orienteering, but you do need to be going fast to make it a real challenge. I downloaded to find I’d done 19.18 so was very chuffed winning by a couple of mins.
I supervised the saftey check in Autodownload, shook lots of hands and headed back up the M5, luckily getting a phonecall from Cath advising me to divert through Bristol to avoid the Avonmouth part of the motorway as it was a car park. Im sure in my 20 years of driving that bridge that they have been digging it up for about 15.

Well done QO for a great event and good luck with the rest of the series, its a good template and I will think about something similar up here in Stafford.

With the MTBO I was going to do canceled I was quickly swept up into the Walton Chasers men’s open team for the West Midlands Champs held on the same day. I didn’t get too much sleep, arriving home gone midnight after flying in from France the previous evening, but a coffee in the services at the end of the M54 soon sorted me out. The road up to the top of the Long Mynd where we were parking just goes up and up and the views from the top are breath taking, far out over the Shropshire Plains of farmland right over towards the Peak District.

The mass start on Leg 1 was not so much of the mass, with only two teams on Men’s open, ourselves and POTOC, disappointingly no teams from HOC or OD. Im not sure if it was the time of year or the distance to travel to the event which kept numbers low.
I went off fast trying to drop the POTOC runner but immediately regretted the cocky decision of diving into the heather with no proper attack point. I slowed up and perhaps lost 20 secs or so locating the shallow re-entrant. Punching at the same time I pulled ahead again on #2 and #3 but again made the same mistake on #4 not picking a good enough attackpoint and fluffed  it letting him catch me again as I went too low. Planning ahead to #7 I thought if I attacked up the hill from 4 to 5 I could finally drop him on the decent to #8 and it worked. Over the next few controls I slowly pulled out a lead of 2 or 3 controls and other than a wobble on some unmarked crags I finished the rest of my 1st leg with no more mistakes about 6 mins clear handing over to Adam Bushnell who kept our lead before handing over to Iain Stamp who extended the lead with a great run.
From the map you may notice that the control descriptions are ripped off. I have done this on relays since the advent of waterproof maps as it negates the need to keep unfording the map to check the codes.
For a novice planner it was well planned and the area even with the long energy sapping bracken was great with amazing views ready to distract you from the task in hand in all directions. Well done Wrekin Orienteers for organising a good event at short notice.
Full results at http://www.wrekinorienteers.co.uk/results.html