More on the Capricorn

You will probably have read that Saturday marked one of my very rare forays into the world of orienteering. However, this one was to be a little different in that instead of wandering around the moors on a route that mirrored my chess playing - i.e. make each individual move without any idea of what the next one was to be, I was being coached by TF, who is a bit of an orienteering wiz.

First step, plot an outline route that has at its furthest point a high scoring control (this was a 'score' event). Aim to be there just inside half the total time available, which in our case was 3 hours, hence be there inside 1 and a half hours. Then plot your outbound route picking up points as you go, but keeping your eye on the clock to achieve your high scorer by half time.

We set off using this method and picked up points steadily, whilst TF continued coaching me in her best school ma'am manner. Our 'half way' was achieved in one hour 18 minutes, a bit on the early side, but we stuck to our (TF's) plan, picking up further points steadily on the return.

Our caution and determination not to incur penalty points meant that we finished in 2:43, meaning that we could have probably picked up another control with a bit of a sidestep in those spare 17 minutes.

However, examination of how the scores of positions 16, 17 and 19 in the 3 hour class were made up shows the wisdom of our (TF's) approach:-

http://www.pfo.org.uk/results-archive/2013-08-31-Capricorn2013-Results.html

KLM did the 4 hour event and scored 107.5 per hour to our 70.

An interesting and educational morning out.