November Classic

[DavidJ]

I have been surprised that no one has yet started a thread on this year’s November Classic in the New Forest. From my perspective, as an early starter on the Blue course, I found the course outstanding. A mixture of short and long legs through a wonderful section of natural woodland – mostly runnable with few obvious paths. There was little of the open heath which is often a feature of events in the New Forest – just direct routes through the woods and across small sections of heath. The final section, bringing us back to the finish, did have some brambles but nothing too serious. The marshes were damp, but not boggy. The map was clear and, as far as I could tell, accurate. Controls were carefully positioned making navigation right to the feature important. Full results and Routegadget were available by early evening.

My thanks to the officials and the Southampton OC team for a great event – I think the best of the 5 recent Classics that I have attended. I hope others feel the same.

[Scott]

Yes, really good fun. I can't honestly say that I enjoyed the last couple of km on Black, which were a bit of a bramblefest, although admittedly that was partly my own fault for failing to adjust my speed/technique to the change in terrain and attempting to bash straight through the grot instead of using the paths But the rest of the area was a lovely bit of forest, the course was well-planned, and the rather bold ponies in the car park added to the entertainment.

The Sandy Balls sprint race the day before was also very good - it's a surprisingly tricky little area. Thanks to all involved in both events.

[Tatty]

Must agree. The forest was at it's wonderful Autumnal best. Tricky in the parts with few brown features. Excellent planning. Thank you Ray Massey, who also did the map.

[Miner]

I really enjoyed the event, organisation, terrain, facilities, map and course. I ran the Green course which offered some decent long legs with option for route choice, something frequently lacking on Green. My thanks to all concerned and especially the planner.

[NeilC]

The Autumnal feel of the New Forest in November always makes this a nice event. I hadn't run on this area before and when I saw the map in the start lane I was hoping for a course with some challenging long legs mixed with some short legs in the finely mapped middle section. Instead my course (Long Blue) just seemed to spiral around the map with legs of similar length with the odd longer one leading to a control close to a catching feature. There's always one course that's a pain to plan and I guess the Long Blue was the longest one that had to fit on an A4 map at 1:10000.

[Homer]

The Autumnal feel of the New Forest in November always makes this a nice event. I hadn't run on this area before and when I saw the map in the start lane I was hoping for a course with some challenging long legs mixed with some short legs in the finely mapped middle section. Instead my course (Long Blue) just seemed to spiral around the map with legs of similar length with the odd longer one leading to a control close to a catching feature. There's always one course that's a pain to plan and I guess the Long Blue was the longest one that had to fit on an A4 map at 1:10000.

You should have done Short Brown as half the M45s did!
The last section over the stream may have been a bit brambly but the change of technique required seemed to catch out quite a few (me included).

As everyone has said; great event, good courses and thoroughly enjoyable. I'd just be interested to hear a little more of the background to the decision to add a Long Blue to the usual range of courses. I think total numbers on Long Blue and Short Brown together was still less than on Blue, so I can't see the need unless it was to avoid maps bigger than A4.

[Steve]

I enjoyed the November Classic very much. I ran Black and was just able to read the 1:15k map with my M45 eyes. My only criticism of the Black course was that it suffered from the same effect that NeilC described for the Long Blue, and felt like a 14km middle distance course. However that didn't mean it wasn't a challenging and enjoyable course. Seems I wasn't alone in getting caught up in the brambles prior to the last stream crossing. The map did show passable brambles in that area.

I only entered the Black because my nominated course was Long Blue and I didn't like the idea of doing anything as short as a Blue, even if it was a long Blue. I considered entering Short Brown, but since I thought that the M45 entry would be split over a number of courses (Long Blue and Short Brown at least) and there would be no real competition between M45s on one particular course I thought I may as well run Black and hope I could read the map!

[Scott]

My only criticism of the Black course was that it suffered from the same effect that NeilC described for the Long Blue, and felt like a 14km middle distance course. However that didn't mean it wasn't a challenging and enjoyable course.

Agreed. I'm normally a big fan of long routechoice legs, but it wasn't really the sort of area that lends itself to them - it was so flat and the forest was so runnable that, aside from the brambly bits, the best routechoice was basically always "straight". Keeping the legs relatively short kept things interesting.

[Jon Brooke]

I did the Long Blue as it was the specified course for my age in our club (WSX) champs, which is always held at the Nov Classic, whereas normally I'd have chosen to run Brown or Black.

However, I thought it was a great course. We started with a 700m flat out run down a ride/path which was definitely a challenging way to start, dipping you straight into oxygen deficit, followed by a 1 km long leg that made absolutely the best use of the map, running perpendicular to most of the paths across the area. My only criticism might be that there were too many controls placed very near to obvious open/wood boundaries, or with big catching features behind - so maybe it meant that you could spend too much time running flat out without having to concentrate hard on nav. On the whole though, a great event. Thanks SOC.

[maprun]

i ran the Blue and thought leg 2 was one of the best legs I've run in the south, a 1.3k leg, with a straight optimum route, with no catching features or easily followed handrails for over 1.0k