Colm Wins at Castlemorris

Congratulations to 3ROC’s Colm Moran on winning the Brown course at the Leinster Autumn Series competition last Sunday. Fingal Orienteers’  new map can be seen on Routegadget here.  Some of the times look a bit on the long side, so it would be interesting to hear what the area and the conditions were like.  Colm  ran 87.34 for the 9.8 km course with 260 metres climb and 23 controls, althought he covered about 13 km according to his GPS. He had about a minute and a half to spare over Conor Short (CNOC): both Colm and Conor spent most of the last year living and training in Sweden so it obviously paid off. The full results are here.

Colm’s training diary on Attackpoint  says:   New map. Fingal map. Quite scrappy, but some areas where I could really stride out too. I’d forgotten how much I love the forest. I kind of wish I could be back in Sweden now. There were times when I thought Sweden was ******, well, nope. those forests were gorgeous. And I want to have them here…

Well, it went OK, I didn’t have many mistakes at all, even though I didn’t feel good about my orienteering. Well, the first section I felt a bit rushed, and like I didn’t want to read the map. The second section I could feel my throat and chest and really didn’t want to run, but I shlogged on, and actually my flow and orienteering improved because I didn’t think much about it, and just read the map on the run.
Even though my orienteering wasn’t great in the first section I didn’t actually have many mistakes. I got away with the map being easy. I really want to run on some proper maps. Would love to go to somewhere like Portugal or Spain this Spring. And Inishbofin this January…
Also, my terrain running in forest has improved a lot. I can run through the forest without having to look at the ground or anything like that at all nowadays, just generally can run better through it too. Unfortunately, in the tough-ass terrain you can sometimes get in Ireland (sometimes open mountain), I’m pretty weak. But I can work on it.