orienteering 43:38 [5] 5.1 km (8:33 / km) +170m 7:20 / km
British Middle Distance champs, Wendover Woods.
On a positive note, I felt I was running pretty well here. Physically this was as good as I have run this year, particularly getting up the hills. On a negative note, a careless mistake at the end of the course lost me a couple of minutes.
#21 - I was intending to continue up the path until I was just about above the control, but I was tempted by the nice bit of forest before I got there. I thought I had climbed enough but I hadn't, but spotted the control on the yew tree and thought I was ok. I managed to run through the "distinct" green area without seeing the control, ran across the slope to another control then ran back again. None of this slope made much sense to me in terms of the mapped vegetation, but I should have been aware of that being likely and stuck to the path as planned.
Also lost half a minute at #13 - for some reason I decided to go back into the yellow fields. It made the control easy I guess, but it wouldn't have been much harder going straight and I assume there was a nice elephant track to follow.
I struggled reading the map here more than I have ever done before. I am struggling even under a bright light back at home, particularly the shape of the ground at #20. Is it badly drawn, or badly printed, or is it me? I didn't have any problems last week in Inshriach.
8th M45, 5.5 minutes behind Andy Monro. My 2 minutes lost at #21 would not have gained me any places anyway. The fastest M50 (Dave Peel) was a minute quicker than Andy.