Training Log Archive: Chris

Day 4 - Darnaway West - Course 39
Much better than day 3. Found the whole area really nice to run in and hit most of the controls spot on, although could have taken a better route to #6. Made a couple of mistakes, at #14 where I went the wrong way, and #22 where I headed too close to the road, and missed the control. Probably my best run of the week.

S6D - Day 4 Darnaway - C39 - Splits

Day 3 - Darnaway East - Course 39 - Middle
Oh dear!!!!! The first half of the course was some of the worst orienteering I've ever done. Every control pretty much seemed to go wrong, with all the bearings spearing me off to completely random places. Also found #10 3 times, when looking for #1 and #9. Stopped using the compass when I realised it was completely useless (as did everyone else!) and the navigation quickly improved, with most of the second half of the course being some of the better orienteering I've done, with the exception of #12, where I have no idea what happened!

S6D - Day 3 Darnaway - C39 - Splits

Day 2 - Strathfarrar - Course 39
After the disaster of Day 1, I wasn't optimistic about my chances. Thankfully I managed to get into a good rhythm straight away and the elephant tracks helped. Went slightly too far down the hill for #5, but managed to relocate and find it. The only real mistakes came at #8, when I was too high and overshot the control, and #9 when I went out of #8 way too quickly in the wrong direction and went to the wrong control before relocating. The rest of the course was good fun, although I did have to resort to straight lining all the controls in the forest because I couldn't make sense of the vegetation on the ground. Finished in under 2 hours, a vast improvement on day 1!

S6D - Day 2 Strathfarrar - C39 - Splits

Day 1 - Achagour - Course 39
Started off reasonably well because we were in an area from Moray 2013, and hit most of the controls spot on until #7, where the mapped vegetation (rough open) did not match the wooded area on the ground, causing me to miss it and hit the ditch afterwards. Got it back together, but the legs started to suffer through the marshes heading to #12, and I made a few mistakes on the short series of controls, with concentration not helped by the flies that would nt go away!. #16 was a very long leg, through marshes which killed any energy I had left. Also messed up this control as I was relying on the boulders stopping, which they didn't on the ground, so I ended up hitting the path way beyond the control. Most of the other controls were fine, I was just way too tired to go at any speed, and recorded one of my slowest times on one of the most demoralising courses to date.

S6D - Day 1 Achagour - C39 - Splits

Training - Achilty
Headed around the area slowly with James and Will, hitting all the controls fairly spot on and using it as an acclimatisation for what the other areas would be like.

Event: WOC 2015 & Scottish 6 days