Getting ones money’s worth!!!!
After my first orienteering run at the 11 person relay I was so enthused that I went straight out and bought a thumb compass. This will make all the difference, I thought.
I was then on holiday in the Lake District and decided to enter an event near Kendal. (Helsington Barrows) The plan was to take my time and practice with the compass. The ground was all open woodland and fields, with the odd Juniper thicket here and there. All very runable. To get my moneysworth I entered the Blue course. With my new toy on my thumb off I went. 52 minutes later all checkpoints had been visited and I’d come 12th out of 60 odd. Great! This Orienteering lark’s a piece of cake, I thought.
So it was that my new found OVER confidence had me standing at the start of the National and Veteran Home Internationals event at Errochty. M40L course with my trusty thumb compass in its rightful place. Ahead were 22 checkpoints, 8.9k and 420m of climb. Piece of cake???? There was just one small problem, well no actually there were millions of them. BLOODYTREES!!!! The following 2 hours 39 minutes was a hard lesson in humility and my thanks to Paul and Lynne for not laughing at me when I finally staggered into an almost empty field.
See you at Kilmory on Saturday. Now, what’s the hardest course!
Posted on 18th Nov 07
by John Anderson - Member
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