It’s been a long, long time since I did any map reading, and I’ve managed to totally forget how to do it. Given my enjoyment of adventure racing and the key need for good navigation, it seemed like a good time for a refresher. Ordnance Survey have two useful downloads: basic map reading (PDF) and advanced map reading (PDF). Check them out if you need a refresher too.
wordpress has got you blogging again – great. Good luck in London.
Hi Martin, if you want to get to grip with nav & map reading for AR you wouldn’t go far wrong in taking in some orienteering if you haven’t already. You’ll find it helps a lot with route planning, as well as the obvious help with any orienteering sections thrown into adventure races.
Edinburgh is well placed for it with a few nice wee areas easily accessible to the city, and there are a couple of active clubs (Edinburgh Southern, http://www.esoc.org.uk , are running frequent coaching sessions at the moment).
Hope you enjoyed London RR, and the nav wasn’t too tricky!
Andy — thanks for the good wishes!
Brooner — I’d looked at ESOC before, but it seemed tricky to work out how I could get involved. Anyway, looked at the site again and there’s weekly training on Wednesday evenings, so I’ll give that a shot. Thanks for the pointer.
London RR was great fun, although it took us ages to go around the first orienteering section in Richmond Park (lack of energy as opposed to inability to read the map) and we were too late for the second section in Wimbledon. Were you marshalling/organising/photographing?
Yeah I was there in London, doing a bit of all 3 (though not much of the latter).
Was at Ministry on Saturday night (which was entertaining) and Sunday morning’s exploits in the city were my doing.
Check out the flickr group for piccies (eventually):
http://www.flickr.com/groups/ratraceurbanadventure/
Oh, and did not know about it. Thanks for the information …