3 Parks orienteering …

Whilst a larger contingent of Westies were battling the elements in EK (judging by the temperatures down below …I am shocked it wasn’t blizzard conditions up the hill), a smaller contingent were doing the 3 parks orienteering event organised by the St. Andrew’s Orienteering Club.

Alan Anderson suggested the idea of this event in the aftermath of Tinto and I am glad he did. I had always been a bit intimidated by orienteers who all seemed to use maps of a very strange scale and even stranger compasses with housings that can’t turn and colours instead of numbers- so it was nice to have a friendly face to look intimidated beside.

The first park (which was Victoria Park over in Scotstoun) was announced by email on the Thursday night with the 2nd and 3rd being advised after each race. Alan and I drove over, registered and got our SI dibbers ready to go. A nice touch was the organisers knowing we were first timers, actually had control descriptions in English rather than the standard orienteering symbols. Start times were staggered with runners heading out every 30 seconds. With six different courses (depending on age, sex and how serious you were) my usual tactic of following the person in front was clearly not going to work.

For Victoria Park, the course was 2.7km, 30m of ascent and 13 controls. It started well…very well in fact – 2 controls down and I was confident. The 3rd control was a “boulder” and things were still going well. The 4th description was “Cliff, crag” – it was here things went less well. Coming from a mountaineering background I was looking for the kind of thing you wouldn’t want to fall off (Kath Kirk asked later if I really expected to find such a thing in such a small park …which was a very good point). I spent the next 8 minutes searching for my crag (despite it being only about 75m from the previous control). Another glance at the control description revealed it was 0.5m high i.e. the type of thing you might trip over rather than fall off! The remaining controls were all fairly straight forward …thankfully. I finished in last position …oh well.

The second race was just a short hop over to Kelvingrove. We arrived just in time for the monsoon / hurricane combination to commence and after downloading the SI card we retired to the refurbished Art Gallery cafe for coffee and a sticky cake. The second course was 2.4km, 55m of ascent and 10 controls. Things here seemed a little more straight forward and I felt I was getting used to the scale (until I ran straight past the 9th control and had to double back). To give an idea of the level of detail that was on the map -something I was expecting to be a small building turned out to be a manhole cover.

Still in last position, the final park was announced – Queens Park over on the Southside (rather nicely positioned for a short drive home afterwards). Having parked the car, Alan and I headed for the cafe again – another coffee and a Twix …perfect! The last course was the longest of the day at 4.5km, 130m of ascent and 12 controls. With a chasing start, the fast folks went first and I went last. Not sure if it was the cold kicking in but I found the navigation here the hardest of the day with three of the controls “inside” thickets. The biggest problem was finding the correct thicket! My only other fuddy was mistaking 3 square areas of grass for the 2 adjacent tennis courts on the map (told you I was getting cold). Finished the course in approximately double the time it took Bruce Duncan (who won the event) cold, wet but smiling.

A fantastic event and big thanks to Terry O’Brien and team for organising it all.

For those interested in a little bit of thinking whilst running, Pauline is organising a score event in Pollock Park on the 7th January !