Urban Orienteering at Cramlington

Really enjoying orienteering at the minute. It's a great way of getting out for a run without focussing purely on "how far, how fast" . I haven't got much enthusiasm for going out for long road runs and the weather out and about on the fells is still not much fun, so orienteering is ticking the boxes for me at the minute.

On Sunday, it was urban orienteering at Cramlington. I was slightly nervous of getting ridiculously 'lost' ( i.e. not finding the controls) as I had tried some street orienteering in Prudhoe before and found it rather challenging!! 

The scale of the map is such that the distances are tiny and the detail is incredible - you have all of the tiny paths between houses and individual trees marked on! 

My course had a whopping (for me! ) 25 controls in just over 5km. This is straight line distance, I believe, and the actual distance was said to be up to 50% more depending on route choice.

I was delighted to find all of the controls and had a fair idea where I was and where I was heading, most of the time! 

On analysing the results, it is clear that it takes me longer to get going than everyone else but I'm generally not too far off the pace for the majority of the controls. I had a tricky control where I knew what I was looking for but as I approached from the 'wrong' side, the kite was not obvious as it was tucked into a hedge around a corner and was obscured from my view. 

http://www.newcastleorienteering.org.uk/evres/1516/Cramlington0207/topindex.html

I learned some more symbols, met an old colleague and had a good fartlek-type training run! What's not to like?! I'm already looking forward to taking the girls to the next Saturday event at Prudhoe.