Victory in the Windle Challenge

Battle commenced at the Lookout on Tuesday night, and was re-joined on Wednesday around the streets of Bagshot. Yes, the Windle Challenge was back for 2013, with WVR taking on Southern Navigators in a combined running and orienteering contest.

In the inaugural match last year, we had to settle for second place after proving that we probably couldn't navigate our way out of a paper bag.

This year, we turned the tables and won the match!

• We had a good turnout, with 23 members representing us across the two evenings
• SN struggled to get their members out for the run, possibly affected by the racing at Royal Ascot, making travel difficult. 

Cross-Country Race

We had a brand new course this year, set by me and Keith, and considerably kinder than last year's. Although it started with the long climb up Sandy Hill, once that was out of the way the only remaining hill to contend with was Surrey Hill leading up to the two mile point. From there on, it was flat or gently undulating, going via the two Star Posts and past Caesar's Camp with the final mile then ahead and a mostly downhill finish. The course was very enthusiastically marshalled by Geoff, Tony and Nathan, with Tony also fulfilling the role of on-course photographer. If he remembered to put film in his camera, we will bring you his photos as soon as the prints are dry. 

The race was very convincingly won by Ali, who came in a full four minutes ahead of Laura in 2nd place, and Gus just behind Laura in 3rd. WVR took 8 of the top ten places and, once non-attendance the next day had been factored in, we won the race by 74 points to 142. (Like in the cross-country league, the better you do the fewer points you get.)

Orienteering

The next night we congregated behind the Co-op in Bagshot High Street. Southern Navigators had an enormous number of people turn up for the orienteering - though fortunately for us most of them were ineligible to score as they had not done the run! Setting off at one minute intervals, we were set the challenge of finding as many checkpoints as possible in 45 minutes, spread out around the Bagshot streets and even in Lightwater Country Park. The map they give you showing the checkpoints does not have street names shown on it - you have to find your way around without that. 

Suffice to say that the enthusiasm we brought to the task was perhaps not matched by our skill at it. The best five SN scores were over 200 (not all counting) and our top score was 151, from both me and Robin, and 150 by both Rachel and Mark. 

Anyway, when all the scoring was done, Southern Navigators won the Wednesday by 95 points to 116. Then it was off to the pub to celebrate our overall win by 190 to 237.

Lessons learned for next year:

• Don't put your GPS stopwatch on auto-pause, which makes it stop when you stop to look at the map, write down a checkpoint etc. As you get penalties for returning outside the 45 minutes, this was a very costly mistake by Gus who ended up incurring 54 penalty points for a score of 26 ! 
• Don't cut it too fine. After a (failed) attempt to find one more checkpoint near the finish, I was gutted to find my official time was 45.01, and got a nine point penalty :(  Two others on our team were also just over the 45 minutes.
• Learn how to map read!!!!!!

The full results can be found here. 

Steve