49 Days of Running

My annual pre-birthday challenge starts a day earlier each year, and this year 1 May marked Day 1. This time around, Day 1 happened to be the first day of the Western Cape Orienteering Festival - four days of orienteering.

I had three participation days, which I've written about in separate posts (Day 3 still to come), and today, Day 4, as course planner for the sprint event.

A beautiful morning for orienteering today. 

This year I'm going to stick with same-same with a 4km/day challenge. It worked really well for me on top of my other activities of dog outings and crossfit. I certainly averaged over 4km/day last year, which is fine. But on those crazy days, getting out for 4km is doable.

Last year's birthday challenge really worked well for me after about three years of poor running. I felt great coming odd the challenge and built on that over this past year. I've been feeling really good. 

Today, my Day 4, I don't think I did quite 4km. I did run around this morning putting out some controls and then afterwards collecting controls. 

I've got a sore left knee and inner thigh muscles after a overextension slip-and-slide in the forest yesterday during orienteering. I'm going to nurse this for a day or two and see how it does. I was quite sore and limping by the time I got home today. If I need to substitute Day 5 run with something low key, so be it.

So, here begins 49 days of commitment to me. Hip hip hooray

W. Cape Orienteering Festival Day 2

Day 2 was a middle distance course and while it did not over a big area, it was pretty tricky because of the straight-line forest navigation and sketchy vegetation features.

After yesterday's OK, but not exemplary run, I was a bit more cautious today. That my first control was slightly dodgey, I was even more cautious for the rest. 

Overall, my navigation was actually pretty spot on. I wasn't feeling confident and the terrain was such that I walked, tramped or sort of jogged. This did allow me the pleasure of seeing hundreds of fungi. Loads of Russula (brittle gills) and more deliciously edible boletes than I have ever seen. I actually stopped briefly to look at the biggest one I've ever seen - way bigger than my hand. If my phone had not been in the back of my backpack I would have taken a photo.

There were really only two errors that I made today. The rest were just cautiously slow. I didn't have to hunt for any of them. 

Control 1

Man, I hate messing up the first control. 

I didn't want to chance an uphill and forest vegetation so I ran around on the road, taking a bearing from the bend. I overshot and I was a bit to the right. I decided to turn around, get back to the road and try again, when I pretty much walked on to the control. 

This shook my confidence a bit and set the stage for the rest of the course. While I walked on to most of the controls and didn't have to hunt, I wasn't really trusting and felt what was almost surprise when I found the controls where I thought they should be. Haha so silly even after all these years. 

Controls 5 and 6

I came into 5 a bit low, saw the road, which I knew I shouldn't be seeing. I can only say that it was with luck that I was in the right alignment to walk deeper in and just find it. 

I'm then not sure what caused me to make my next mistake... 

I took a bearing from 6 to 7, thinking that I was at 6! I got to the road, realised that I should have been going 5 to 6 and not 6 to 7. So I ran on the road and then ducked into the forest and got the control. That would have been bad if I'd missed 6. 

That was really it for any drama today. 

I found that the nav today took a lot of focus and attention. I used my compass for pretty much every control and really tried to use direction, contours and vegetation to hit them straight. 

Hilton beat me by two minutes. He had a big error that took him about 16 minutes to find a control. I didn't have any of those big mistakes but most of my controls were a bit slower than his. 

Jacori had a good run. She beat me by almost 5 minutes. I think she had two big errors but was consistently quicker on the rest. Over 18 controls, a minute faster here and there adds up. 

Tomorrow is the long distance event. I'm hoping that these two days were warm ups to tune my brain into focus. 

W. Cape Orienteering Festival Day 1

The first day of the Western Cape Orienteering Festival took place at Royston Farm, where I did the run-mtb-run event two weeks ago. Still, orienteering navigation is very different to Google Earth map navigation so I knew the course would be challenging.

Overall, my nav was OK, but I did make a few less desirable choices. I wasn't particularly focused, for whatever reason, and it showed as a non-competitive run. 

These are the odd things that I did:

Control 3

I came in a bit low to #2 and then not wanting to chance the green vegetation, I ran around. At 3, I first went in from a bend in the path and didn't find the control where I thought it should be. Shock and horror. 

I went back to the path and ran around a bit more - the control was visible from the path.

Control 3 to 4

The easy route was to run on the trail that runs parallel to the road (yellow). I cycled this two weeks ago. So I decided to rather take the trails. This was definitely slower, but was new terrain for me to discover and demanded that I pay attention to the map.

Control 5

Approaching 5, my first thought was to go from the corner of the road, but then I decided to rather get closer by taking a bearing from the bend in the path.

I suspect that I didn't go far enough before starting to look for the control when I didn't see it where I thought it should be (thicket). I looked around for a bit and then took myself back to the road and the corner, took a bearing and I walked straight to it. 

My Strava track shows that I may have even passed it nearby. 

From this, it looks like I wasn't quite at the bend and that I went in too soon... But this is probably a map-track offset as it doesn't show me coming along right on the road, from the right, which I did. 

Control 7

For the route to 7, the fastest would have been to take the trail that I'd come up on (yellow) but instead I took the zig-zaggy trail. It worked fine but was definitely less efficient. 

And that was it. Moving slower, being way too chilled and these errors cost me. 

Hilton finished 22 minutes faster than me and Jacori 10 minutes. 

I'll really need to focus on the long event on Saturday.