So what is a SENile ?? It is the South East Night League - basically orienteering after the sun has gone down. The League has only had four events this year - Trosley Park, White Downs, Blacklands Farm and the final one, Wimbledon Common.
We shared transport with Jim & Les and had not a great drive up to Wimbledon, on a lovely, cold evening. We got there in plenty of time and registered, then got ready to run, (after munching some more ginger fairlings of course - well, there had been complaints on Wednesday that there weren't any this week). As usual, Jim & Mike were running the Navy course and Les & I the Olive. (Season so far 1 win to Ali, 2 to Les, although one was virtually a draw and I was ahead on points).
Les & Jim went off to the start first, with Mike and I not far behind. I saw Les start and thought I should give him a bit of space, especially as he was standing just beyond the start for what seemed to be ages before heading off. I figured out the tracks quite quickly and headed off towards number one, and went over totally on the path ! Was too busy concentrating on my map and my route choices onwards to two when I went over. It hurt 
Anyway, found 1, carried onto two and wasn't paying attention to my path junctions and overshot a little. Decided to go straigh ish along smaller tracks to three and ended up to the north west of where I wanted to be, having found and followed Jim a little. From there on, was doing ok, although I did have to check a couple of times to ensure I was exactly where I thought I was on the open areas. As Neil found, it was very easy to get confused and find yourself with parallel terrain syndrome !!
It all looks so different at night, and it pays to have a reasonable head torch. I had actually ripped my map, just west of control 9 in my earlier fall, luckily I didn'y lose that bit and could still read it ok. Nine to ten I think we all took the sensible path route round and then I was at the finish in 36 minutes. Bryony finished just ahead of me and Julia just behind.
I went back to download and was talking to Julia. I checked to see if Les had downloaded, as I couldn't find the car keys at first, to be told no men had downloaded yet ..... He came in a little bit later having had a pretty bad run ! Julia and I did tease him a little. It was only two controls that he really messed up.
Others didn't have great runs either - Mike wasn't too pleased with his, but he didn't get anywhere near as lost as Neil (who was on a mission to beat Mike) or Jim. Final results were Ali 4th (if you don't count Nick B's superhuman 2nd run on Olive in 18 mins, having run Navy already).
Just awaiting the SENile League points now !!
Update 26th Feb - the Final SENile points are in: at Wimbledon Ali 318, Les 182. Overall (best 3 of 4 events) Ali 1,030, Les 1,010 !! 