My experience in the Orienteering Northern Night Cup - seasoned Moravian Orienteers competitor Eddie Harwood sets the scene in the woods of Strathspey
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What is it about our youngsters, asks Moravian Orienteers veteran Eddie Harwood?
Throw them out into the dark forest and they seem to run as though the sun is fully out and there is not a fallen branch or boulderfield in sight.
The fifth leg of the Northern Night Cup was hosted by Badenoch and Strathspey OC in a small but varied and technically challenging wood by Grantown.
The weather obliged by being dry and above freezing.
Personally I had a nightmare of a run, very early on scouring the only hillside that could possibly be the one on the map holding the one metre high boulder that I was searching for.
Eventually I realised that I had run off the map where another similarly-shaped hill had had me fooled – ten minutes lost!
My run carried on in similar vein with me misinterpreting my position and leaking time regularly.
Finally, with over a kilometre of dark forest left to go my light suddenly went out. It took me about eight minutes to locate my spare torch and get it fitted to my head and the dud one stowed away before I was able to continue using a relatively tiny pool of light.
Unsurprisingly my 97 minute outing was half an hour behind the previous competitor on the long course.
No such problems for 14-year-old Finlay McLuckie whose winning run round the 4.8km course in under 37 minutes beat all the adults and older juniors.
Sixteen-year-old Michael Bishenden, who has been invincible in the series so far was relegated to fourth - he was one minute 48 seconds behind.
Rob Parkinson (M65 category) stood tall for the oldies coming a good second on the short course, but nonetheless beaten by an under-13 from Inverness.
Next week sees the conclusion to the series in another quality forest south of Nairn.
