Last Saturday was the Carlisle City race, part of the Nopesport Urban League this year. Having never been to Carlisle before I was keen to run this especially as it was only a couple of hours drive away!
The day started with fog causing extremely low visibility in Edinburgh, so much so that we decided it’d be pretty horrible to orienteer in… Thankfully after an hour driving South we were out of the fog and into glorious sunshine! Thankfully we were treated to this wonderful weather for the whole day… until our return to Edinburgh that is.
We arrived in plenty of time for the race, parked the car and then headed towards the start and finish ‘arena’ (picture above, taken after the race) which was in the middle of the busiest shopping street in Carlisle, on a Saturday afternoon! Needless to say it was pretty busy. Borderliners were all ready ahead of schedule so people who were early were allowed to start their run before the official start block, we saw no reason not to just run so after a quick warmup, a trip through a crowded shopping centre to go to the toilet, and an argument with a start official about contact details in case I died during the race (!) I was ready to go.
I started off well to the first control but was a bit hasty and had not planned ahead to 2, a tricky route choice leg. On leaving 1 I saw that the ‘obvious’ route choice to the west of the church was impassable so I doubled back and went to the East. If I’d planned it ahead of time I would have gone West but gone a little further and there was a road connecting to where I wanted to be. The underpass was fun and the boulder control under especially so:
Then we were out into the open, away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre and running around the castle, with some easy route choice legs. 3 was pretty even for which way was best and then 4 was very simple and only there as a guide for 5. 5 was in the maze, which we’d been given special instructions about, which proved largely useless as the hedges weren’t easily crossable so I struck to following the maze. I made a mistake coming out of this control, I should have gone towards 6 but I came out the way I’d gone in and lost some time. I made another slight error coming out of 7 and had to readjust my route to take this into account, I ended up cutting across the grass when I could have taken the path the whole way…
9 was a good route choice leg which I got spot on, it was quite hard to see where the control was once you got there but didn’t lose any time. I made a mistake coming out of 9 though (this is turning into a common feature in this run) and went a little far before turning right, adding unecessary distance.
11 to 12 was an interesting leg, the North-South road you had to cross was very busy for the first 2/3 of it, after that point it got considerably quieter as there was a turn off into the bus depot / car park. I didn’t realise this in time and did my usual ‘cross the road at the earliest point when you can do so safely’ and crossed it pretty early on (within the first third). Then when I got to the potentially busy bit I realised I had to cross 2 roads in order to get to where I wanted to be, luckily there was nothing coming so I just ran across. Later on while crossing this road on the way back to the car I had to wait over a minute at the lights here before it was quiet enough to cross, it could have been a costly thing to happen during the race. I reckon it could have been saved by some out of bounds hashing on the road up to that point.
Apart from a bad route choice to 15 I was pretty clean for a while. If I had to choose again I’d go a different way to 18 (around the castle rampart) but no real time loss. 19/20/21 were all dead running, and lots of it. I planned most of the last few controls on the way to 21 (coincidentally I went east on this huge route choice leg, there was nothing in it though) and as a result had a lot fewer minor errors in the latter section which was just a parade around the alleys of the city centre. I was a bit peeved at the penultimate leg, 29-30 which was through the same busy shopping centre I’d gone for a pee in earlier, it was really too busy to have as a route choice on a Saturday afternoon, I don’t think it should have been mapped – just as you wouldn’t map a stream as crossable if the weather had been really bad recently.
Anyway, here’s the map:
All in all I was pleased with this race, had a decent enough result and didn’t make any huge mistakes. Took it too fast at the start and lost some time from not planning ahead well enough.
Could do with updating this blog on the day of the event rather than the week later!
Lots of racing coming up; FWTN tonight, Scottish Night Champs on Sat, Faskally knoll thingy on Sun, should be good! Leg was a little sore after Carlisle but it was mostly on solid ground, hopefully all these races won’t be so bad on the legs.
