Boredom and Senior moments
Posted on 15 Jun, 2010 by Lynne Walker | Filed under Blog • Orienteering
This is the alternative title for my experiences at the Irish 3 Day Orienteering Event, held near Lough Eske in western Donegal in June 2010.
Paul & I decided to head for Donegal as we had enjoyed our few days on the north coast of Northern Ireland in January. We had not had time to explore further west and this would be the ideal opportunity.
The drive over to Donegal from Belfast was a map reading challenge, due to the fact that the map was quite old and hard to read. We took a route through the Sperrins, but not the route we intended! It was quite scenic though. Once in the ‘south’ (as many in Northern Ireland refer to it) or the ‘Republic’ or ‘Ireland/Eire’ the roads crossed vast tracts of featureless moorland, dissected by the peat cuttings. The state of the roads reflected the boggy nature of the ground; speed was quite low as the potential for take-off was high. During the drive over we kept exclaiming about the size of the new houses and the large size of the plot of land they sat on.
We headed for Dungloe, a small place on the west coast. It would mean a bit of travelling to the orienteering but would place us well for the rest of the holiday. The campsite also advertised WiFi. Dungloe was not the small place we expected but a bustling town with a folk festival that weekend. This involved nightly closure of the main street but that did not affect us much.
Day 1, Benson’s Hill
2.8km, 110m climb
This race started in the late afternoon so we stayed at the campsite for the morning and left after lunch. The walk to the start was advertised as 1km but took quite a long time. On measuring it the next day with the GPS it turned out to be 1 mile!
I picked up my map and set off slowly. The pre-event information had mentioned that most re-entrants had marsh in them and the rest of the map looked blue as well! My navigation was OK but I did find it quite hard to lift the contours off the map and translate to the ground. It was hard going as well – your foot sank into the soft ground about 2cm each time and so gave very little ‘push off’ and was very strength sapping. My knee hurt (probably a medial ligament strain and I had had physio on it two days before) and with the small tight area of the course I was a bit bored by the lack of variety in the navigation. I was not very happy with the prospect of another two days of this. The way back to the assembly & car parking seemed very long.
Day 2, Croaghmeenare
5.2km, 215m climb
This area was immediately north of the Day 1 area and was about another 1km up the track (the total walk to the start was advertised as 1.5km but I logged it as 2.5km).
The course was much better today and I enjoyed myself. The contouring round the hills was OK for my knee (right leg down, must be turning into a haggis!) and there was enough variation to keep me interested.
I did find it a long way and was running out of energy near the end. However from coming last on Day 1 (1st was 44:59 and I was 5th in a time of 52:42) I managed to come second! (1st was 1:24:33 and I was second in 1:27:14).
Day 3, Benson’s Hill
4.9km, 230m climb
The W55 courses were long, especially as compared with the M50 Paul was running. Each day I was only between 0.3km and 0.5km shorter than he did.
Day 3 start was just beyond the Day 1 start and on the other side of the track. We were well aware of the ‘Irish kilometre’ and so left plenty of time to get to the start. It was a chasing start, done by course rather than class (the classes were small and so this was a reasonable strategy).
I think this day is best summarised from my SportTracks entry
“This run could have been quite good! It was a chasing start for each course and at #1 I had almost caught the person in front of me (started 30sec before). Between #3 and #4 I overtook the two in front of me by taking a better route. I was then overtaken by the man on the way up the hill but he was in my sight.
On the way to #11 I went high, saw a control below but thought it was not mine as it was too low. I was with a pack walking uphill and I kept stopping thinking that things were not right. That low control had been my #11 so I had to retreat and lost the pack. The person two in front of me also caught me up again.
#13 had the wrong control description (it said re-entrant north side but was on a knoll north side) but I recognised that and was only thrown by going up a parallel re-entrant.
At download I was told I had missed #8 - and yes I had sailed past it and gone straight from #7 to #9! Sheer muppetry!
Without those two howlers I would have had a really good run!
Knee very tender and sore as the contouring round the hill was the wrong way.”
When I looked at the results I saw that I had had the fastest time of the day but no #8! It would not have cost me much time as it was en route to #9. I think I was also complacent with the control descriptions as there were four re-entrants in a row. Ah well, I will have to be careful of this in the future as I hope to never make the same mistake again.
Paul had really good runs and was in the top three of his class. On the last day he had problems locating a control (#16 on my course) and lost his place on the podium (although they only recognised the first in each class).
Would we go again? The answer is probably ‘Yes’ as the orienteering was OK, people were very friendly and welcoming. We also had a good holiday out of the visit.
Next year it is the turn of the Shamrock O-Ringen which will be held over three days near the start of June in west Cork on an area called ‘Sheep’s Head’. Thinking about it!
I am a level 4 orienteering coach and a qualified Assessor & Coach Educator. I have been orienteering for xx years and have coached on many foreign tours.