Yep Sport

Race 10: Victoria Park 10K

Race 10 was to have been the Bushy Park Time Trial on Saturday, but my train out to Teddington broke down on the platform. So, Plan B, a training jog around Victoria Park, was executed. Later on my housemate mentioned she was running a 3K fun run around the park the following day, and on [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »

Race 9: Reigate Priory Map Memory

The ninth race in my pre-tour prep, down near Reigate. I arrived in the town in a torrential downpour, it was hailing and the hail was coming down so forcefully it was bouncing right back up in the air! However it stopped just before I set off on my course, which was a map memory [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »

Race 8: Bloom Wood Evening Race

This was another of the TVOC summer series races - a mass start race of three loops. See my race writeup.
Here’s my mistake towards the end of the second loop, leg 5->6. Green shows where I thought I was going, red shows where I was actually going.

On leaving 5, I made a big parallel error. [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »

Race 7: Hogsmill Open Space

This was an evening race put on by Mole Valley as part of the London summer evening orienteering series. Hogsmill is down by Ewell, and getting there involved a commute on a packed train from Waterloo. I am so glad I don’t have to do this every weekday.
The map is very small, but excellent planning [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »

Race 6: 147th Bushy Park Time Trial

I had a different race strategy for this one - instead of starting slow and then gaining speed, passing lots of people as a motivator, I positioned myself from near the front of the line and went off fast, passing the “playground turn” (1km) at just under 4 minutes. I felt quite comfortable throughout the [...]

Posted in Event Log | 2 Comments »

Race 5: Hampstead Heath

This was a low-key evening event put on by LOK. The course was hung with extra small control kites, and no punching or electronic timing. The course was just 5.4km but with 17 controls, and used the most technical parts of the heath. Unfortunately one control was stolen, and another was hung in the wrong [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »

Race 4: Park Wood Evening Race

This was another in the TVOC Summer Evening series. Park Wood is just north of High Wycombe, it’s not an area I’ve been on before, but it’s near Hughenden which I did run on last year. Just like Hughenden, it’s a hilly map, with runnable forest mixed with plenty of green areas.
The race was a [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »

Race 3: Ham Riverside Trail Challenge

This was put on by SLOW as a trail challenge - a different format race, designed to attract runners. The key differences to a normal O race were the mass start, the 10km quoted being the shortest practical distance rather than the straight line distance, and being able to see the map - with route [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »

Race 2: Knole Park

My, the nettles! Writeup here.
Here’s my whole route - a pretty good GPS trace the whole way. Note that I made good use of paths and roads, because of all the bracken and nettles about the place.

Here’s a mistake on the approach to the first control - not a great choice of route (the red [...]

Posted in Event Log | 2 Comments »

Race I: Worthy Down Pre-AGM Race

The first of my 22 races planned for the next six weeks. I’m aiming to blog every race, on the same day that it happened.
This was at Worthy Down, a military base north of Winchester. Hopefully I (or Google Maps) aren’t jeopardising the security of the base with these high-res satellite photos!
It was a 2.5km [...]

Posted in Event Log | No Comments »