{"id":987,"date":"2010-01-01T19:29:32","date_gmt":"2010-01-01T18:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=987"},"modified":"2010-01-02T17:47:52","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T16:47:52","slug":"new-years-day-score-rough-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"New Years Day Score – Rough Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a late night of partying (including Wii Fit at\u00a0five minutes to midnight for some reason!) the thought of running \"\"<\/a>around a West Midlands grotty country park for an hour wasn’t especially appealing, particularly given that the area description in the advertising was hardly flattering, but I de-iced the car and headed down to Walsall as it was only 30 minutes away.<\/p>\n

After registration the 25 minute walk to the start, next to a frozen canal, was also not inspiring. The local youth have spent the Christmas break seeing what bizarre objects they could try and\u00a0throw on to the canal to smash the ice. I think\u00a0those who tried the rolled up carpet or the loaf of bread didn’t quite have the right idea though!<\/p>\n

\"\"Onto the area and things started to look good, lots of semi-open heathland, a bit of contour detail and, of course,\u00a0the canal, separating the two halves of the map. The format this year was to get as many as possible on the first map before exchanging for a second. With an A4 1:5000 map I went out with the strategy of clearing both. After a slightly disorganised mass start, approximately 140 orienteers dived off in various directions. I went hard and fast for the nearest control and, turning after punching, was pleased to see a huge crocodile stretched out behind me. It then settled into a good race with me and\u00a0a chap in a \u00a0SHUOC top (whose name currently escapes me). I lead through the first 14 controls until he passed me as\u00a0I lost \"Roughwood<\/a>about 1.5 minutes stupidly faffing about around an unmarked\u00a0track junction when I should have just looked at the contours. I then just dug in on my own and was surprised at the map exchange to be back in the lead, probably having passed him in the low visibility light green areas of the map.
\nI then made another silly error which cost me 30 secondss and got confused by the control code which lost me another 20 secondss. Just still in the lead I then \"Roughwood<\/a>managed to let “SHUOC top” catch and pass me at number 2 and he pulled away from me on the next two long running legs. I ran the rest cleanly and managed to clear up with 4.5 minutes to spare.
\nI thoroughly enjoyed then event, but it did turn into an hours\u00a0hard running\u00a0and I’m sure I’ll suffer in the morning as the last time I ran was back in late November! In fact it would make a cracking little sprint\/middle race\u00a0area.
\nI then did the decent thing and collected some controls to warm down and then chatted to “SHUOC top”\u00a0 as we jogged back collecting in the tapes back to the car. No results at present as HOC were having computer issues (they need to get AutoDownload, plug plug!) but, as far as I know, I was second. A great start to the year.<\/p>\n

Happy New Year – may you always ride\/run in sunlit forests!<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.harlequins.org.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Rough Wood Country Park<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, and “SHUOC top” is also known as Andrew Llewellyn – well done to him, good race!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a late night of partying (including Wii Fit at\u00a0five minutes to midnight for some reason!) the thought of running around a West Midlands grotty country park for an hour wasn’t especially appealing, particularly given that the area description in the advertising was hardly flattering, but I de-iced the car and headed down to Walsall … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “New Years Day Score – Rough Wood”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-competitions","category-orienteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}