Chris Curtis Web Site

Two courses for the price of one today (excellent value!)

This was about the fourth time I have run in Hove Park. According to winsplits I had a consistent but slow run. I felt reasonably good and navigation was easy (apart from control two which saw two of us running round a little building before diving into the bushes to find the control). I am very unfit at the moment - lack of time for training and lack of orienteering generally - so thought 24 minutes for 3.2km was not too bad, especially as it was becoming seriously hot in the sunshine towards the end.

The second course was a genuine sprint around two adjoining school campuses. I did enjoy this very much as the navigation was intricate and demanded total concentration, but with 26 controls I wished I was fresher. There were fewer long runs and more darting around buildings, up stairs and so on which suited me. I was not as slow as I feared but yet again lost concentration and missed a control, so was disqualified. I have a very bad habit of doing this at the moment.

The list of really good orienteers who were disqualified for the same reason (though at different controls) made me feel a little better!

There were some nice views of the sea and the breeze across the school field was very welcome.

It must be summer. Southdowns Orienteers have come out of the woodlands, where the brambles and bracken are head-high at this time of year, and for the next few months we will be running around parks and adjacent terrain.

In recent years the traditional “Park-Os” have developed into the Sussex sprint series - thanks mainly to Rob Lines’ great organisational skills. The sprint orienteering format uses these areas well, and allows good navigational challenges when the terrain is not as technical or physically demanding as some “classic” areas. The idea is to make competitors go very fast, with tight small-feature navigation on detailed 1:4000 maps. In that context it is very easy, and very costly, to make mistakes like coming along the wrong side of a wall.

I thought the course was excellent. I can’t believe it was the planner’s first (though he says it was!). There were lots of changes of direction and changes of style, from simple straight-line running to obvious features to micro-navigation in a tricky quarry and in a complex parkland and set of buildings. I never felt the interest wane and with 19 controls close together, you had to think all the time.

Well, how did it go?

Better than I feared and a little worse than I hoped! I have missed a lot of orienteering and training recently. I am terribly unfit and out of practice. The last couple of outings I have missed controls or become hopelessly lost at some point. I was very pleased that neither of these things happened. I had a cleanish run apart from being rather vague in the quarry (it was tricky!) and not spotting from the map that there was a path round a building - which meant going up a high embankment and having to go round to find somewhere to climb down when I saw the reality on the ground.

I was terribly slow despite feeling the pace and came back in 41 minutes for 3.5 km - well behind the average but I have been worse.

I thoroughly enjoyed it though - which has not always been true recently. Things should allow more training and orienteering soon so improvement must be on the cards.