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It was decidely frosty this morning. I went into school to collect a couple of keen lads and headed to Tilgate Country Park, just south of Crawley. We arrived very early for the event – there was no traffic on the road. The car park was at the top of a steep grassy slope, pure white with hoar frost but as the sun rose everything was soon dripping as the frost thawed. It was calm so not too cold as we made our way to the start.

This was very much an event of two halves for me. I could not believe how fast I was over the first four controls. I felt fit and comfortable, and seemed to have a clear mental image of the terrain every time I glanced at the map. By control 7, I was an astonishing 7th in the field and had aced one or two legs – running really fast and nailing the controls first time. I was loving the terrain – perfect runnable forest, fairly flat and open and just making sense to me.

The inevitable disaster came on the way to control 8. I was heading down a very obvious path looking for an indistinct path curving away to the left. At about the right point, there was an indistinct path, the direction was right and off I went – suddenly, the terrain no longer made perfect sense, but was close enough to keep me trying. Minutes passed until I hit a control – number 9: well away from where I should be. I used it as an attack point to head back to 8, but then hit the obvious path again and convinced myself I had gone off-line. It was only in discussion with other lost orienteers also looking for 8 that I finally twigged that the obvious path was in fact the indistinct one I had been looking for – I soon found 8, but then had forgotten where 9 should be. A loss of 20 minutes over the two controls and worse, a loss of the sharp concentration I had enjoyed to that point so that the second half, though generally not losing much time, was less precise – though my running was fast enough. I obviously run better when refrigerated.

So some very good things to take away – I really can orienteer well sometimes – and a hard lesson. I did not cope well when making a mistake, did not think flexibly enough and made it much worse, and then did not put it aside and get back to the task in hand – making it even worse still.

I liked the courses very much – the variety of controls and challenges was exceptional. I loved being out on a crisp and sunny morning and am just annoyed with myself that I let it all go wrong half way round.

I was looking forward to this event. Hollybush Wood, though quite a small area, is high quality, with lots of complex terrain. The course made good use of this, with many legs forcing you across interesting country with no possibility of path running. There was ample opportunity to use all sorts of line and point features, including several legs where the best route was using a stream as a handrail then breaking off to attack the control. In many places, you needed to read all aspects of the map, contours and vegetation changes as well as obvious features to ensure you stay on track. This course used the forest very well.
I felt better than I had done at Stoughton, but paradoxically, I was slower over the ground. Some of this was due to the very thick mud on all the rides and paths, which meant there was little chance to speed up on the occasional path run, and to a couple of errors – or more accurately to a couple of controls where I did not apply the right technique the first time and had to try again. In both cases I had not identified and executed a sensible attack point.
I also felt the effect of not having done any exercise all week, which affected me physically, but mostly mentally – I did not really believe that I could do well.
The calm, gently sunny weather was very welcome – a perfect south of England November day and I was delighted to be out in the forest rather than indoors.