Judith Holt takes us through her medal-winning run
The 2026 BNOC took place at Egypt Woods in Hertfordshire last Saturday. Five DVO members trained and made the trip, Judith coming in 3rd in W75 and John 1st in M60L. (John’s account is coming soon.) Congratulations John and Judith!
It is said that ‘It takes a village to bring up a child’, in my case it took an orienteering club to bring home a bronze medal. I was not at all sure that I could still manage night orienteering, but after encouragement from our Club Chair and a generous offer from my husband to drive me there, I dared to enter the British Night Orienteering Championships. (Fortunately Leicester City were playing away that weekend.) John Duckworth offered me his super-bright head torch (thinking that he would not be able to run himself). Richard Parkin planned some MapRun loops on a corner of the Longshaw map including two at 1:7,500 especially for me. He accompanied me for my first night orienteering rehearsal just a fortnight before the event. I realised I need to do some adjustment to my map-reading torch arrangements and went back a few days later with Jane and Nicky Hart for another go.
A rather feeble head torch worn round my chest worked well for map reading but was inclined to slither down as I ran, so I created a harness to stop the slide. On the morning of the event, I was very nervous. I did calm down before I started and for the first two legs, I was disappointed that the headtorches of other competitors seemed to give away the control sites. I soon realised that only worked if you were headed to the correct place anyway. I drifted off course to control 3 but was caught by a small, fenced enclosure. I was so pleased with myself for averting a big error on that leg that I lost focus running (stumbling) towards the next. Realising I was lost I headed west to hit a path. See the extent of my error marked by the red route on the map below.
Once there I managed to calm myself and take the very obvious, safe route that I had considered using at my first attempt – 8 minute error? Controls 5 to 8 presented no serious challenges so I was travelling as fast as I could and feeling good. That led to me rushing out of control 9 thinking I would nail it with a long bearing. More time lost! With such a small field (5 of us) my errors didn’t cost me the Bronze medal. Sadly, it is more about who has retained endurance, agility, focus and the nerve to orienteer in the dark. The age-related decline in endurance athletes, including orienteers, has been described as “curvilinear from age 35 years until approximately age 60–70 years and exponential thereafter”. Will I be at Broughton Burrows on Saturday 20th February 2027? I don’t know. I hope I can have a go in Leicestershire in 2028, it just depends on that exponential curve.
