Mullgrave Woods

Day 2: British Middle Distance Championships

Terrain

The event took place in Mulgrave woods, a steep sided valley in the heart of the North Yorkshire Moors. It had plenty of runability along with lots of felled and fallen trees. Times were expected to be slow as the courses had more than 5% climb in them.

Event

Some top men were missing but the field was very strong with the likes of Oli Johnson, Neil Northrop and the like (the SYO girls were also in the running on the Womens').
The arena was glistening in the sun as temperatures soared into the high teens.

Courses

Excellently planned courses with a bit of dodgy mapping in some areas (form lines are always a bit rough) made great orienteering and I had a pretty clean run – possibly one of the best of the year!
I made less than 40s mistakes up to the radio control, but still managed to visit the controls in the wrong order – I made it to 4 before 3 for the second week running! Still I was running fast and felt quite strong even though my legs felt crap after pounding them along the streets of Scarborough the day before.
I managed to catch planetFear boss, Shane Ohly, just as Matt Speake caught me from 4 minutes behind. I thought I was onto a winner as Matt made small mistakes and me and Shane both benefitted from the other one being there – we got spurred on and raced the last 2 loops, also chasing Matt down... A slip at 20 cost Matt a bit of time and I got ahead again, to be chased and passed by both men before 22. I was pretty dead by the long run in as I got at least 20s taken out of me from penultimate control to the finish. I did however have in mind the time set by Dan Halliday earlier on in the morning and set that as my goal. I did this successfully and came home in 6th, only to be pushed back to 12th by the leading men.

Thoughts

A great day of racing and really technical and fast paced navigation! I loved it – my best performance under a bit of pressure this year!!