This years New Years Day mass start score event was held at Twemlows, an old overgrown old Army/RAF base near Whitchurch, Shropshire. In fact its only 3 miles from our old house near Market Drayton and would have been our closest orienteering area but it wasnt mapped at the time.
After the usual hung over phaff to get a club team sorted we all headed off to the start a few hundred metres away. This year a new concept was to be tried to get rid of the mass packs that form when 150+ people start at once. In fact, last year as I turned back from my first control I met 100 people coming in after me.
So to counter this we all had to go to the control code of our age class first. Being an M35 I had to run the full length of the map to number 135 before I could start hoovering in the controls. There has been some discussion post race as to the fairness of this approach, it particularly penalising the women and favouring the older junior classes but its an idea that can be improved upon for next year.
I nailed all the controls on the first map but took a daft route coming back up to the map exchange losing some time to an out and back on 118 and 112 rather than sweeping through them before going back towards the start.
I was a little worried when I came across my 7 year old coming out of 137 a control way off the path but left her to it, knowing she couldn’t stray too far.
After the map exchange my legs started to get heavy and tired, having gone off too fast at the beginning, and made a small error losing 30 seconds on 132 thinking the boulder marked on the map was an unmarked ‘fire bin’, but essentially I started to slow.
Turning for home I entered the finish field with leaden legs, struggling up the run in and ended up =5th fluffing the finish punch and losing a place, very unlike me.
A mass start score is a great way to use a small area like this and an event on New Years Day is a great way to start the year. Looking at Holly’s splits afterwards Cath and I were gobsmacked and more than a little proud to find she had got control 123 on the second map too !
http://www.wrekinorienteers.co.uk/res/twemlows2011/team_laurie_bradley_trophy.html
Happy New Year everyone
Looks nice on the map.
Last time I ran around there most of it will of been dark green 20+ years back. Used to live about 400m off the map. Went in there quite a lot as a teanager and then had a regular training loop as well but all on the paths.
It was really runnable in the woods :o)
Had a good chat with your parents who had come up to run!