Orienteering race 1:01:22 [4] *** 7.1 km (8:39 / km) +280m 7:13 / km
spiked:9/14c shoes: X-Talon 212 (SF)
British O Champs, Golden Valley & Cognor Wood - M65
New area, but not hugely challenging.
S-1 Picked map up and thought "ooh that's a big climb to #1" - took a safe track run to the right and was a bit surprised when I started to go downhill. Oops! - control was in a valley, I had misread contours!!! Route should have been ok but had a couple of gates to open & shut and the final approach down the valley was scrappy. About 1min faster to left and straighter.
2-3 Confused a bit by mapping - dark green forest didn't seem dark green and then came on a track junction I wasn't expecting -turns out "track" off to the right was mapped as a narrow yellow ride in light green which my red/green colour blind eyes couldn't see - several secs of hesitation!
3-4 scrappy route through lots of grot - 45s? Olsoran 1.41 up at this point.
4-5 ran hard on tracks with a bit of climb and got fastest split by 23s - but more importantly 1.27 faster than Olsoran.
6-7 went long way round hill on track rather than over the top - fastest by 30s and got the lead.
7-8 nailed this compass & pacing
10-11 bit of a dogleg route to start with, then again had red/green colour blindness problems with olive green & yellow open around a house - it all looked the same so I ended up going needlessly into a grotty bramble infested bit of forest to avoid going oob. Compounded this by missing control which I was expecting to be on some kind of ditch rather than in the middle of a bog! - ~1.20 wasted, but fortunately not the lead
11-12 ran hard up the 50m climb and was fastest by 43s
13-14 another big climb and another fastest split - 25s
1st, Olsoran 65.47 in 2nd