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
We arrived in Malham on Friday afternoon where I stayed in the youth hostel so I could get an early start as we were
flying out to France on holiday from Liverpool Airport on Saturday early evening. After a nice walk up Gordale Scar we ran for the car as a huge thunderstorm cascaded water everywhere and nicely wetted the ground for the Trailquest the following day, organised as part of the Malham Show. The show is a traditional country show with everything from punch and judy to livestock competitions, classic tractors to cake weight guessing.
I got first start, and taking note of the very strong prevailing wind decided to head out west first. I wobbled on the first checkpoint as it was marked in the wrong place on the map but the control description, ‘ford’, picked me up and I perhaps only lost 30 secs. There was then that inevitable gruelling climb out of Malham village up onto the high moor that characterises this picturesque area.
Now time for my rant…..
I never found #14, a 30 pointer on a non existent track junction but on an obvious bend. According to my GPS I spent 12 mins cycling, then running up and down the track hunting for it, navigating using the farm, contours, tracks etc to no avail. I eventually gave it up as a lost cause when 3 further people turned up and couldn’t find it either. Apparently it was hidden on a wall some 50 metres from the track when a few eventually found it.
Fighting the headwind I carried on very annoyed. #18 was a little hidden #10 was ok but even using an ultra-safe approach to #12 climbing from the north I spent 10 mins hunting around trying to find it. By this time I was really really angry. Id spent the best part of £100 to get to and enter the event and had dragged the family up to a very soggy show to take part in for me a very important decider round of a national trailquest series which I was at that point leading. To lose 22 mins in a 4 hour race is annoying if everyone is in the same boat but many competitors headed East first and due to the blowy wet conditions never made it round to the two dodgy controls.
I nearly chucked in the towel and headed back but the scenery and riding was good so I carried on. My original route round #26 ,#19 and back through #22 or #50 was now going to be very tight so I decided to just hoover up everything I could get to on the way back in a very inefficient manner and finished 13 mins early.
I ended up 11th, way off the pace but splits show only Liam Corner 6th was the only other in the top placings to suffer the dodgy controls. Bryan Singleton did very well on the vets to get round my intended loop in the time available after having similar problems to me, but his fitness on the hills is just awesome.
So should I put it down to experience and just think bad luck, No ! It is a national series, controls should be fair for all competitors. There is no explanation or apology on the website – a week later just a set of skewed results that will be used in a national league that for me has just lost all credibility. It might sound like sour grapes because of my result, but I would be having a major moan even if I had won the event in fact packing the car up later I saw many people searching round Malham trying to find #1 which was marked incorrectly on the map all looking very frustrated.
Trailquesting in general has always had a bad press from Orienteers due to inaccurate maps and poorly placed controls but it is possible to put on consistant fair events using the quality of mapping available from the OS with some corrections if needed, which Dark and White, NYMBO, XCC and Open 5, manage to do most of the time.
There is a golden rule in adventure racing and trailquest organising which is only plan and put out controls using the race map and don’t hide them.
If I’m available I will goto this years AGM and support the TCA chairman who I know has been trying to get the quality of controls placement better for several years and see if a consensus can be reached on a way forward in reducing the number of mistakes to a minimum. We also need a consistent approach when mistakes do happen so that competitors do not feel so angry which I know from chatting to others I’m not the only one on this occasion.
Rant over
By the way Malham is a beautiful place to visit and I gather that the Malham show is well worth a visit if you are in the dales over the bank holiday weekend next year.
results available at http://www.malhamdale.com/Malham09.txt
With the rest of the team off site seeing in Jerusalem and floating in the Dead Sea on the rest day at the World MTBO Champs I was booked by the TCA and British Orienteering onto the IOF advisers course. This 4 hour course together with the reams of rules, guidelines and appendixes I will receive when I get home qualifies me to become an advisor / controller on major international events. The course covered all the current mapping and planning guidelines plus all the out of forest stuff from accommodation to medal ceremonies. The course was useful for several reasons. One is that someone in the UK is now fully up to date with international rules and guidelines which is paramount to the development of the domestic sport. Two I will possibly get invited to advise on a future World Ranking Event which means foreign travel and the chance to absorb other countries ways of running events, again valuable for UK MTBO development.
Full IOF rules and guidelines are available at http://www.orienteering.org
Buff the multi function head wear people kindly gave all the British team some Buffs, a technical shirt some shorts and various other bits and bobs to take to Israel. I have been a big fan of Buffs for a few years now wearing o
ne either as a skull cap in winter or a bandanna in summer and am of the opinion you can never have too many. My new Union Jack one joins the other 6 I have already. I can now start to pick a Buff that suits my mood. If you are not sure how to wear a Buff check out the demo videos here.
http://www.buffwear.co.uk/pages/product-info/ways-to-wear.php
