Many thanks to Isabel Berry for this report
A select group of orienteers gathered at Great Tower Woods on Saturday for two rounds of excellent orienteering, hosted by Jesus Orienteering Klubb (JOK). JOK is the alumni club for Oxford university graduates, of which there are a fair number based across the NWOA clubs. The format for the day was a chasing sprint, with a prologue in the morning and the chasing part in the afternoon.
Keeping things simple, there were just three courses set – although four on paper, with courses B and C (of A, B, C and D) differing only in the map scale – with runners of younger age enjoying the 1:10,000 scale (I was incredibly grateful for the magnifying glass on my thumb compass!) and runners of older age benefiting from the 1:7,500 scale.
The woods at Great Tower, on the shores of Windermere, offer fantastic technical orienteering and especially in the spring, are a delight to run through. The prologue courses used the slightly simpler terrain to the east of the area, with the chase courses venturing onto the more technical western slopes.
It was off to a frustrating start in the prologue for me. I felt disorientated and couldn’t get the map and the ground to tie up in my head. After some careful walking around, checking what I could see, I found my way to the control. #2 didn’t go a whole lot better – I ran to more or less the right area and then it wasn’t where I thought, so decided to climb to get a better vantage point. There, I spied my class leader exiting the re-entrant in which the control was placed, and while she ran off into the distance, I went and dibbed. After that, things got better on the nav side, but I struggled badly with energy. I’d felt very heavy warming up and my legs just didn’t seem to have any power in them. Climbs felt tough and more sweat-inducing than usual. I finished feeling pretty dis-spirited and wiped out of energy.
Happily, a good lunch and drink back at the car picked me up well and I hoped I’d be able to make a better job of the chasing sprint. Start times were calculated with a base time for your class – 14:10 in my instance – and then you added your time in the prologue to that, to get your actual start time; so I started around 27 minutes after 14:10. This means that whoever in the class crosses the finish line first, wins – with the cumulative time across the prologue and the chase deciding the winners.
While my class leader was ten minutes up on me at the chasing start, I had someone two minutes ahead of me, and if I beat her – and no-one from behind me beat me, then I would end up third in class. Possible – yes, if I avoided any navigational glitches. So my plan for the chase was to know where I was at the times when I needed to, and to go steady away. As with the prologue, I felt very disorientated setting off, needing lots more map checks than I would usually, but I found my way to the first control fine and then was running with Roger Thomas (WCOC) who’d started ten seconds behind me and was on the same course as me (but with the bigger map scale). Roger and I kept taking different routes to controls and then arriving at them at the same time. However, all the chase courses were gaffled and after control #5, I found myself alone and it stayed like that until I spotted my two-minute lady as I headed for control #8.
A few things happened then… I thought it was the same control as the prologue control #1, so made the sloppy decision to just run to it without navigating. Not a great tactic, given that I had struggled to find it the first time round! And I got excited and bowed to the pressure of being within over-hauling distance of the two-minute lady. I ran headless into the area and the control was nowhere to be seen and I was no longer sure where I was on the map. Meanwhile the two-minute lady got completely away. I probably didn’t take as long to reconnect the map and the ground as it felt like, but it was an annoying loss of focus.
We then went for a second loop around the steeper side of Great Tower and it really came together well for me. I made good route choice decisions which suited me, and I totally nailed a tricky, diagonal descending leg on a compass bearing to a crag, popping out right above the crag. Very pleasing! One final slog back up the hill to the open area at the top and then there was the two minute lady… within my sights and only four controls to go… I still had a chance if only I could hold it together and not let the pressure get to me.
Slowly I reeled her in. It was going quite well, but then we both fluffed up a control as we raced together toward it, and I could feel the race sitting on which of us relocated first. I got lucky and spotted a man running into a feature which looked likely so headed that way and sure enough, there is was… not a strategy to feel proud of. Now I knew I needed to hold that lead through the last two controls and I didn’t know what kind of a navigator or runner she was.
The penultimate control was amongst features which were visible on the skyline, so I ran as hard as my legs could at that point and then came the descent to the final control and the finish. Descending is not my forte and I was desperate not to get passed by her and lose that hard-earned lead on the final downhill, so I did my best and it was more than good enough… I finished very comfortably ahead of her. But… disappointingly, I never got the third place as the lady who’d started next behind me in the chase had a very good run and eventually made a cumulative lead of six seconds on me. Surely I could have found seven seconds on the chase! Never mind; it was good fun and nailing the nav and finding I was back to my usual strength and energy in the afternoon for the chase was very satisfying.
Trophies for class winners were fabulous flying pigs, made of wood and in various shades of pink, echoing the JOK flying pig logo. A superb day of orienteering and a pity more people didn’t enter – they missed out on an excellent event with lovely atmosphere, quality terrain and all the fun of the chase. Thank you to all the JOK and other club members who planned, organized, controlled and supported on the day.
Isabel Berry BL
Top three BL Results came from:
Jeff 3rd in M40+
Keith 2nd in M65+
Border Liners Orienteering Club 