KNC - the Kent Night Cup is a series of informal evening training events, organised by Nick Barrable, mainly in Kent, but they do stray into SO territory occasionally, as it did last Thursday at Blacklands Farm.
Laura picked me up from home, as there was no point Mike coming home from East Grinstead first and we all met up over at the farm. Rob appeared to be organised and have everything under control. It was a fairly mild evening, although we did get a little chilly waiting around to start ! This score event was slightly different to others as we had two maps to run on. We were all starting on Map 2 (don't ask), which had 12 controls and we could go and find as many as we wanted on that map and then go back to the start/finish at some point to exchange for Map 1, which had 10 controls. We were only allowed to punch any controls we found if they were on the map in our hand and still only had 60 minutes to find as many as possible !
Rob handed us our first map as we punched the start, with most folks heading south, I made the decision, with a few others to go to the north to start with. I headed out across one of the fields towards the strip of trees in the middle with a long gully runing the length which you can easily run along. This I did from my first to second controls. I decided not to go the control at the far north end of Map 2 and talking at the finish, I think it was a wise decision. I headed back into the woodland on the west for a depression and dropped onto the path and along and across the stream (without going off the map) for my fourth control of the first map.
I saw others running in the opposite direction to me for a bit, which was odd but fun ! I carried on round in my anti clockwise direction, heading south still, picking up controls in a gully and on a hill by the stream as I went. I made another decision to leave out a control on a stream junction, which looking back on I maybe should have gone for as I would have had time. I looped round again, collecting the last four controls on the first map well, before racing back into the start/finish to exchange maps.
Again I headed off to the north on Map 1 and decided to leave the two furthest north this time. I found my first and crossed over the stream again to my favourite control site at Blacklands - the cliff ! I ran back along the stream collecting an earthbank, then decided to go for the extremities to the west and south of the map and headed out across the field (uphill) and back across two fields and into the wood again for a ditch end on the southern boundary.
From here, I then also decided to go for the most south easterly control (uphill again) and dropped back across the same field for one I had seen on my first loop on Map 2, but wasn't allowed to punch and the final two controls and back to the finish in 50 minutes. I missed two controls on each map and got a total of 18 !
We all had reasonable runs - Laura was 1st woman and 5th overall, Mike was 6th overall and I was 4th woman and 14th overall - my best KNC result ! I was really pleased with my run and the apres event social was fun too ! The pub was nice, cosy and the food was good. Rob managed to flatten his battery though and was stranded back at the farm whilst we were all in the pub, until Mike went & rescued him with his battery pack thing !