Stodge-Blog

It was nearly a case of going down stairs on my bottom on Sunday morning, the New Years Day score event of the previous day having taken its toll on my calves and quads. In fact I had to force myself to walk down them properly carrying the box of SI kit.

Leading up to the event I had decided not to run, so soon after being ill and not wanting to pick up a silly injury at an event not important in my MTBO training, but I was leant upon by Cath and a couple of other club members to support the event and run (this quandary may make an interesting blog item in the next few weeks, watch this space).

I stretched and stretched, warmed up and stretched some more before starting steadily, legs like lead, but I swept through the first 4 steadily before my first encounter with the huge linear marsh that runs through the valley that bisects the southern part of the map. Although the wet bit doesn’t extend far it is surrounded by man eating tussocks and reduces all but the most determined to a comedy walk.

I made a little error grabbing the wrong track on the way to 7 losing perhaps 30 secs but ran cleanly through the rest of the first map, getting lucky off-track several times with good bunny runs through the terrain speeding things up.

I made another error coming out of 13 losing about a minute and a half going too high and overshooting the control before bouncing back to it, but got a lucky break on the way to 16 with a good elephant track across the dreaded marsh. After 18 I started the final climb for home. My legs had had enough by this point and it was all I could do to keep running up the track to 19, but kept it going to the finish.

Given the state of my legs I was happy with 3rd some 7 minutes down on Iain Stamp and a minute down on Mikey Hopkins.

For those looking at the map thinking it would make a great MTBO area, it would, but it is unfortunately covered in bridleways: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=405165&Y=311172&A=Y&Z=115&ax=405130&ay=311130

Results and photos here: http://www.walton-chasers.co.uk/results/2011/clubchamps/index.html

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