Hello everybody!

I haven’t been on the blog for a while as I’ve been getting back into the old routine of school & homework – sorry!

Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been doing since the Lakes5:

  • I attended the White Rose Weekend and was really pleased with my Light Green Results on the Saturday and the Sunday, considering that they were my 2nd and 3rd Light Green events. There was also a Night Score event that I took part in – the hardest part was finding the venue! :-)
  • Next, I went to the CompassSport Trophy Qualifiers in Formby (on the sand dunes). I decided that I don’t like sand dunes! Enough said… ;-)
  • On the 25th September, it was the PFO Club Championships at Thompson Park. This was a half-hour score event that acts as the decider for the PFO Junior and Senior Men & Women’s Champion. I came back 2 minutes late, but got 29 out of the 30 controls (a little bit galling as the missed control I had ran past twice!) My brother, Benjamin, was the first boy unaccompanied on Yellow and I became the PFO Junior (M16-) Mens Champion! Yay!
  • On the 9th October, it was the British Schools Score Orienteering Championships, hosted by PFO, at Witton Park, Blackburn. I came back 5 minutes late (a record for me!) but came 10th in my age class – apparently it’s enough to get a mention in my school assembly! :-)

Last weekend, PFO took a team to the CompassSport Trophy National Final at Burbage Moor near Sheffield. Me and my mum arrived in plenty of time, and after a quick chat with the rest of the PFO troop we headed off to the start.

Appropriate to my competitive age class on the day, I was to do an Orange, and when arriving at the start I could see that the area was mainly open moorland – my favourite place to orienteer! At 11.50AM, after a slight confusion with the clear box (apparently I punched it twice instead of once!) I was off!

The Legs 1-2-3 were very straightforward to find – it was more about route choice than navigational skills. However, on Control4 (as you can see on my RouteGadget), I made a mess of the route choice and tried to hit the vegetation boundary between open land and woodland – I didn’t notice the minor path running parallel to my route! Although that did cost me some time, it was a good lesson to have learned.

Again, Leg 4-5 was a simple leg, just running along a path/river until you hit a water pit on the left hand side. Leg 5-6 was also fairly straightforward, however the boulder/path layout was not what I had visualized and I did end up a bit confused! In Legs 6-7-8, it was just a straight run to the finish, which was quite handy in making up for lost time at Control 4!

I contributed the maximum 100 points (I won the CompassSport Trophy Orange Mens class!) towards the PFO team score, however we narrowly missed out on a podium place by less than 70 points. It was still our best ever result though!

We all had a fantastic time – roll on CST2011!

RouteGadget is available for this event here

Garmin Connect data is not available for this event

For the latest updates on the move, follow @pendleorienteer on Twitter!

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