This weekend saw the traditional opener to the orienteering season – the Aire weekend in the Dales.
Saturday's weather could hardly have been better, with blue skies, sunshine, and a pleasant breeze. Having done no running for weeks due to various injuries, I decided to ease myself in gently by doing the longest hardest course available, Black. Expecting to come last, I surprised myself to finish 16th out of 18.
Today was not a good day to be out on the hills, so I decided in advance to go for the Blue course, at 5.7km. Of course when I arrived I found myself entering Short Brown instead, 7.1km. Oops. Most of the next 2 hours was spent wandering round in circles in zero visibility trying to work out which knoll in the sea of knolls was the right one. The answer was, none of them, I was 200m too far west. If this had been a mountain marathon I'd have liked the conditions, as it would have given me the chance of gaining a few places on the fell runners who can't navigate. However, being an orienteering event, there are shit-hot navigators all over the place, so in the end I finished a very wet 19th out of 20. But still did better than the 12 who dropped out without finishing!
Next it's the RAB mountain marathon, in 2 weeks time. Hope the weather's more like yesterday than today!
Tags: bedgraggled, blue skies, circles, sunshine, zero visibility