As we have a little leeway, in England anyway, as to where we can go for exercise, we thought people might enjoy a bit of forest O training, so we have created MapRun courses for 6 past league courses:
- 3 courses from the 2020 League at Mallards Pike North/Lightmoor Works, Forest of Dean. Details.
- 3 courses from the 2019 Leckhampton Hill race, near Cheltenham. Details.
The details include printable maps for all the courses. They’re also linked from the Courses page of the Maprun Gloucestershire website, towards the bottom of the page.
As with all maprun courses there are no controls on the ground, so these offer a very good opportunity to practise accurate navigation. You can, however, set your phone up to show where you are at all times: this means you can keep the phone tucked away, but if you are convinced you are in the right place and can’t get a beep on your phone, you can get the phone out and see where it thinks you are!
We have test run one course and it worked fine. However, do not expect the phone GPS always to work 100% accurately under the summer forest canopy, or on steep slopes. You should nevertheless be able to complete a course and record a result. If you have trouble, or would like to comment as to how it’s gone, we would very much like to hear from you. Please use the comment form on the Maprun Gloucestershire post, or the facebook page, or send a note to maprun ‘at’ ngoc.org.uk to let us know how you got on.