After the long drive back from Dorset, I still had one event to go in the ‘mad weekend’, my club’s Annual Championships. This year its was held from the Style Cop Car park and used Brereton Spurs and Rawnsley. I had to run early as I was also responsible for producing the results.
My legs after Saturdays efforts were very sore, but after the first couple of controls they eased up a bit and I was running well. Brereton Spurs is actually quite tricky with quite a bit on contour detail on the steeply sided hill. There were lots of amused Downhill mountain bikers with the normal ‘witty’ comments as I ran past but I mentally took note of some of the tracks the trail fairies have been building that I must come back and ride sometime !
The planner then took us over the road into Ranwsley for a slog round the steep hills surrounding the main Chase Downhill area. I made a huge mistake when Myself and Ian Turner found a tag on a tree in the wrong re-entrant. (For non orienteers each control is taped with the code to be used in the weeks before the event and checked by a ‘controller’ for fairness). we assumed wrongly that the control had either been put out in the wrong place or nicked. When eventually we gave up and headed off for the next one it was obvious we had been looking in the wrong re-entrant. Note to self, look at the angle of the re-entrant next time !
The final pull back up the hill to finish just hurt and hurt, although I had some encouragement from the yappy little dog that chased me most of the way up it. In fact Dave Brown heading the other way thought I was taking it for a walk !
I was quite pleased with the result and without the mistake and Saturdays races in my legs would have been on the heels of the winner Iain Stamp.
Routegadget available here… Results available here…..