Lloyd Biddell

Today I competed in the Robin Hood Trophy at Sherwood Pines - as usual with badge events I did M21S (though I'm tempted towards M21L) - even though a short course it was over 8.5km. It was clear near the start that the recent storms have taken its toll on the forest - I've never seen such devastation - literally hundreds of tress blown over. Anywhere bordering an open area was worst hit, but the main parts of the forest were largely unaffected. I had a fairly scrappy run, but attacked the course as much as possible and ran as fast as possible which helped. Only issues were number 2 which I overshot on the route I took so lost 30 secs, 9-10 where I cut a corner but misjudged and ended up on the wrong path and lost 30 secs, 16 where I ended up missing the knoll and lost 20 secs. The only big mistake of the day was 20 where I lost 3 minutes trying to find a depression ( couldn't find it at first so relocated to the veg boundary and still missed the control the second time by...

Well what can I say - firstly that I'm glad that I didn't do the Midland Night Champs at the same venue the night before - it would have been a total nightmare! The car parking field was completely waterlogged (though the students at Warwick seemed to enjoy getting muddy pushing the cars!). Thankfully I found an area by the field with hard standing... The map is pretty small shown by the 1:7,500 scale with two parts on the Brown. To be honest I hated every minute of the course - no disrespect to Graham Gristwood the Planner but the area was really grotty. Full of Brambles and grot everywhere - if it wasn't a West Mids League event I would have retired. The runnable forest was mainly slow run, the slow run was mainly walk and the fight was 'are you mad?!'. I kind of gave up taking it seriously fairly early on, but either way still finished 8 th out of 18. What was slightly annoying was that I was only five secs behind the leading M21 so didn't quite manag...

Today I did the Lincolnshire Bomber City event at Lincoln - 4.6km and 24 controls. I had a good run throughout, generally playing it safe early but missed a few shortcuts that would have saved a few seconds. Lets cut to the chase - Between 7 - 8 there was an 'uncrossable crag' where if you went straight over the crag the control was only 125 metres away. The only acceptable route was probably three times the distance. I have to admit that I went over the uncrossable route, mainly because at the point I crossed the wall was only 1m high (but in other places it was about 5m) and didnt notice the extra thickness of the the feature on the map (I assumed it was just a normal crag). I'm sure others did the same. At download I owned up to my (unintentional) mistake and asked to be dsq'd - I also asked the controller to check out unusually quick split times like mine (it was a significant advantage). Originally I was told that as long as I wasnt leading there would be no need t...

Yesterday I went to the Octavian Droobers C5 night event at Kenilworth Common. The format was a 60 min score with 13 controls, followed by a return back to the start to pick up a map for the next 13 controls - you didn’t need to do all of the first set to move onto the second map. None of the controls had the conventional banner (just a stake, square white board and the EMIT punch), but they were surprisingly easy to find. The first blunder I made was that I didn’t realise the map was 1:5000 so overshot the first (no 2) control. Throughout the run it seemed like one of those areas which at day is as straight forward as they come, but at night the myriad of paths were not always very distinct and the changes in vegetation and contours made things fairly confusing at times. It was definitely an area where solid navigation is required. After No 2 I went to 1, 5, 8, 6, 9,10 and at this point I realised that I couldn’t remember which controls I had been to. It was only then I unfolded the m...

Today was the Club Champs, the first one I have been to in five years since becoming a member of Walton Chasers. It was fairly wet underfoot and began to rain quite early on in the course, but not enough for it to become a hindrance. The Brown course was 8.5km with 335m climb. I decided to attack the start and got completely dis-orientated in the small trees/ grot on the way to number 1. In the end I lost at least a couple of minutes. I also ballsed up 2-3 having exited number 2 in the wrong direction. 3-4 was ok but I think my route choice was dodgy so probably lost 30-40 secs. By this point I must have lost best part of 4.30 mins . I continued to attack the course as opposed to my usual tactic of defensive orienteering (i.e. paths) and had a pretty good run without any errors of note until 15. The recent training must already be paying off as I felt physically good throughout and was in the strange position where I was running well within myself, and it was only my navigation that ...

Over the last week I've done a bit more training - been to the gym for only the second time and then went out for a bike ride on Saturday (51.27) which was my slowest time yet but to be fair the conditions were awful - loads of crud on the road surface and large ponds developing in the road where the water hadn't drained. Then there was the wind which was pretty bad as well. Anyway, today was the Laurie Bradley Score Event held by POTOC on Tittensor Chase. I ended up being Club Captain for the day (jointly with Dave Thomas), having to make sure everyone is on the team declaration and adding scores up etc. I ended up getting all 27 controls in 52.08 (8 mins to spare) so I suppose I came joint 1st (I think there were five others who got the maximum score). I felt quite fresh in the legs all the way round which was promising (maybe the two weeks of training is already beginning to pay dividends?!). Strangely for me I didn't have too many navigational blunders (briefly los...