35th Oxford-Cambridge Orienteering Varsity Match, held on Leith Hill, Surrey. Most of the Cambridge team didn't make the event in time after they got stuck in the traffic delays caused by the
M11 van fire, so the individual VM itself was postponed to the following day. Kat's and distracted's training logs will reflect this. However, since I'm no longer a student, I ran as a guest among the alumni on the Saturday.
I don't have my maps with me since they were collected on Saturday and I didn't remember to reclaim one on the Sunday. However, Kat had picked up two copies of the men's course maps (not sure why) and kindly let me have one of each.
I got on mostly okay with the controls in the technical part. With number 3 I ended up hitting the holly bushes to the south of the control, but with number 15 I really don't know what happened. I was fairly sure where I was, and was fairly sure I was going the right way to the control, but I just could not find it. Eventually I got lucky and spotted it.
It was the legs out of the technical bit that threw me the most, particularly number 16 (the last one before the map exchange) and number 29 (the last one). With both of these I hit a different path to the one I thought I was on and ran the wrong way. With number 16 I found myself by the car park 300m to the south, and with number 29 I eventually figured out I was going the wrong way and instead of doubling back on myself as any sensible person would, I decided to head through the morass of grot between the path I wanted and the path I should have been on instead.
Number 23 was also a bit of a problem. It was in a clearing in the vague north part. I didn't really have any plan to hit this one. I eventually found the larger clearing further north and then spotted the control from there.