We had another very successful training day on 16^th February and at the moment the club seems to be going from strength to strength.  Once again, Mike was the organiser and here’s his report about the day.

When we held our junior training day in January, Scott Roberts, the proprietor of Bumbles, asked me if we’d like to hold another event at his premises and I thought it would be a good idea to hold something that would cater for all club members.  Scott had given all competitors at the Darnaway South event a 20% discount on food in his café, and as he’d offered to extend this, how could I refuse?

For various reasons, Darnaway is only available for us at certain times of the year, and it’s at its best when the leaves are off the trees.  It’s a huge area, covering 2 A4 10:000 maps, and it’s got some of the most amazing terrain you’ll find anywhere.  So the idea was to give the experienced among us a real technical challenge, and the control picking exercise that formed part of the 4.1 K ‘Green’ course certainly proved that.  Control picking is where one control becomes the attack point for the next, and hence there were lots of short legs in the most technical bit of the forest. There were a couple of spoof controls out there, and as the control descriptions didn’t include control codes (just the feature description), you had to be pretty certain that you were in the right place, otherwise one mistake would lead to another.  And it did!

I’m not naming names, except of course, those of our new racing snake Ade Chapman (he of the great sprint finish) and SOA coach Hilary ‘Do as I say not as I do’ Quick!  Both of them seemed to have performed quite well…………until we checked their printouts afterwards!  They were not alone, and there’s a message there – read your control descriptions.  If it says ’Knoll West side’ it means exactly that.  It doesn’t mean that you’ll find the control on the north side of a hill.

For the juniors, there was the chance to try a yellow course that changed colour half way through, and for those who were up for it, a full-blown orange.  Once again young Johnstone showed his potential, and it was also nice to see M10 Andrew Barr performing really well.  I’ve been trying to get hid dad Nick to come orienteering for years (he’s an ex RAF navigator who runs and climbs hills) and maybe young Andrew will finally drag him out into the woods!  Rumour has it that Nick was out there training on the Sunday so maybe he already has.

For a bit of fun, we had a little competition to see who had the fastest sprint finish.  Ade will never be able to live down his son Tom (aged 15) beating him by 3 seconds, with a tremendous 170-metre run in time of 26 seconds.  Shame about the rest of the course Tom, but it was your first stab at this level of technical difficulty so all excuses accepted – you’ll be better for the experience.  No excuses accepted for you Ade!

As a matter of interest, I had a go at running the Green course as fast as possible on the Sunday.  I’d got round in 29:45 running quite briskly (for me) when I was checking out the control sites, but it was interesting to find that when I ran really hard

I was actually 10 seconds slower overall.  Yes, I beat my leg times on most of the controls, but mistakes on 3 of them, presumably induced by oxygen debt, proved costly.  I even lost a whole minute on the control that was shared with the orange course so the message is loud and clear.  No matter how good you might think you are, don’t rush it.  If you’re not in contact with the map when you need to be, SLOW DOWN or you’ll regret it.

But enough of me.  It was nice to see so many of our new members taking part, and we hope you are enjoying your first taste of orienteering, whether you’re doing it for recreation or whether you have your sights set on great things.  I’ll be away in New Zealand by the time the next training day at Roseisle comes along, but I hope that as many club members as possible try to make it.  If any members of neighbouring clubs happen to be reading this, please pass the word round that you’re welcome too.

Mike