Every Second Counts

I attended the O-France 5-day event in the Vosges from 8th-14th July. I’d been walking in the Pyrenees working on my latest guide for Cicerone Press so it was a 700-mile drive across France to get to the event.

Only 1400 runners this year, compared with 2000 in 2016, probably because of the clash with the World Vets in Denmark. Nick Campbell (an English M60 living in Paris) does an English commentary at O-France events which makes it a much more interesting event.

I wasn’t expecting the terrain to suit me. It didn’t! But despite that I was hopeful of a good result as O-France courses tend to really challenge the navigation.As expected, Days 1,2,4 and 5 were typical ‘North of England’ with very steep scarp slopes covered in rock features. I’ve never coped with this terrain in England. Longer legs always involve a lot of path running and despite being a mountaineer I’m always very slow up steep hills and my pace-counting doesn’t work on these slopes. The woods were described as runnable, which I suppose was true of the steep slopes as there wasn’t much vegetation on them and the flatter areas were M21 runnable. Several of the older British runners retired on a couple of days as they found the slopes dangerously steep.

The start times were interesting. On our course the D21short course went off first, followed by the H60 runners and then the H65 runners last. This meant start times were about 11am every day which suits me. It did however mean that the temperature was about 30˚C by the time we started.

On Day 1 things got off to a bad start, Martyn Roome (a useful orienteer from ‘up north’) started two minutes ahead of me and when I got to the first control I found him wandering around lost in thick vegetation. I couldn’t make head or tail of the map and I lost about four minutes before I found the control (and then told Martyn where it was!). Another control on a vegetation boundary in high bracken and thick wood caught me out later on as did a problem with the crags on one of the steep slopes and I finished in 71 minutes having lost about 10 minutes hunting for controls. Some French planners still seem to think orienteering is a form of hide and seek! Disastrous run? Actually not; Jean-Claude Menut had an excellent run (ie got lucky?) and won in 66 minutes and Manuel Dias came in a few seconds ahead of me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have helped Martyn, he was in fourth place. Charlie Turner (SLOW) took 95 minutes and it was only after another mistake on an easy control on Day 2 that he realised why he was going wrong; he had put the wrong pacing scale on his compass!

Day 2 was a middle-distance race and when I’d finished a clean run in 40 minutes well ahead of Jean-Claude, Martin and Charlie I though I was in with a chance of winning. The map seemed a lot better (same mapper!) but I suspect it was just a better planner not using the dodgy parts of the map. Then Manuel came in in 33 minutes! I watched him on the run-in and he was running faster than I could have 40 years ago! A couple other runners put me back into fourth place.

Day 3 was the critical day. The terrain was only gently sloping, but was much greener, but with plenty of faint rides. It probably compared with some of the areas used for the Chiltern Challenge. This is the type of area I generally do well in with compass and pacing being critical for finding point feature in low visibility forest. I started two minutes behind Jean-Claude (who was first starter) and caught him up by the second control and saw quite a lot of him during the rest of the course. He was obviously running faster than me but was a little hesitant with his navigation. I got ahead of him then made a 90-second error on a simple compass and pacing leg in good visibility forest and he caught up. I though I’d lost him again but he went steaming past me on the run-in (on a running track). I managed 50 minutes then Charlie came in a minute ahead and another runner managed 48 minutes and we waited for Manuel…..and waited……and waited….eventually he arrived in 75 minutes!! I was now a few seconds behind Jean-Claude with Martyn in third place.

Martyn knows Manuel well and said he runs very fast, but if he misses a control he can take tends to do random searching and can lose a lot of time. I had a chat with Manuel before Day 4 and he doesn’t do any pacing which can account for small mistakes causing a big loss in time.

Day 4 was another short course and I had a good run taking about 34 minutes. Jean-Claude also had a clean run and extended his overall lead to 1 minute 51 seconds. Charlie also had a good run being a few seconds behind me. Manuel avoided the mistakes this time and won in 30 minutes and got himself into third place ahead of Martyn.

Day 5 was originally scheduled as a chasing start, but this was abandoned as they were concerned that the prize-giving would be too late. This increased my chances considerably as I was never going to be able to beat Jean-Claude on a run-in. Day 5 was a peculiar course. It was advertised as long-distance, but was actually middle-distance with ‘long-distance planning’; we only had seven controls and therefore lots of path running! On these steep areas I always run paths whenever possible even if it greatly increases the distance. This time we had the same scarp slopes as Days 1,2 and 4 but the map was much greener giving plenty of scope to go wrong inside.

I had a couple of small mistakes (under one minute) and took 44 minutes 46 seconds. Charlie showed his running speed with a time of 38 minutes which pulled him up to 5th place despite his disastrous Day 1 and Manuel got it right again and took 37 minutes to confirm third place. Martyn had a disastrous run and dropped down to 8th place Jean-Claude was last starter so I had to wait for him to finish. Eventually he arrived in 46 minutes 38 seconds.

THIS MEANT THAT I HAD WON BY ONE SECOND !!

Brian Johnson (Wimborne Orienteers)