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Swaledale Outdoor Club |
| > Home > Newsletter > Orienteering > Mass Start Team Orienteering |
Mass Start Team OrienteeringCatterick - 22nd September 2002Alison and I had negotiated an early duty on SFRO's fun run (also in Catterick) to allow us to arrive just in time for CLOK's first attempt at MSTO (with apologies to those who hate FLAs, oh and TLAs). We registered and received our briefing and took our place at the start alongside the 9 other teams. Maps were laid face down and when the whistle went we grabbed our maps & tried to work out a plan of attack. The course consisted of 9 'spine' controls and 27 'random' controls. The idea was that every team member had to visit and punch each spine control and at least one team member had to punch each random control - thus the optimum system was to divide the random controls evenly and run independently. We decided to work our way round the course in stages, dividing up the random controls as we went and meet up again to work out the next stage. 2 controls were over the road from the start, so we grabbed one each, then met again to run together and collect spine controls A, B & C. We split up again to collect 2 randoms each, then met again at spine control D. The map was taking a bit of getting used to (open areas and pockets of woodland in a generally built up area) and we both found ourselves clipping random control 3. We ran together to spine control E, where we split again, collecting 4 random controls each. One control each on the way to F, then we followed roads to random control 11 and split up to collect 4 each. Some of these were a bit testing (when is a path not a path?), but we found them all to rendezvous at G. Homeward bound now & we collected random control 5 and ran across the rugby pitch to H, nearly forgetting random control 4 (one of the goal posts) on the way. 19 was collected on the way to I (the last spine control) & we managed to scrape home inside 2 hours. Our legs were feeling a bit weary by the finish, but we were pleased to find that we weren't last, despite being the only team of 2 (there were two teams of 3 & all the others were teams of 4). The event was very enjoyable with essentially easy navigation (we didn't use a compass once) even if these funny maps do take some getting used to (why is yellow open ground and white runnable forest?) Paul Brooks |