Taunton Parks and Streets #1

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.