Race Evaluation
West Point A meet: Red-2X
piutepro
| 1. | +02:00 | I have the latest start time plus not many people start in the last hour of the start window. The woods are wide open. - I cross the power line, drop down through green to control, but no control. It is one ridge over, the rentrant under the circle and the green more is much bigger than mapped. Start with a bang, already two minutes down. A long race to come, so I keep going. | |||||
| 2. | To trail and straight through dark green (open dark green) to meadow. | ||||||
| 3. | Run to end of island. No brainer. The bridge has a walking speed limit. Never dealt with official speed slow down during orienteering before. Read map on bridge. | ||||||
| 4. | Up the hill, attack from top of the hill. The tiny slash turns out to be a cliff. Live and learn. | ||||||
| 5. | Speed downhill, almost sprint. | ||||||
| 6. | +00:30 | The big green field says: Go around. So I go to road, pass green on west side and climb uphill. See the boulders below the control, get to plateau, turn left and see control. | |||||
| 7. | +03:00 | Over the saddle on road, along the cliffs. Check of the big ones to keep contact with the map. Still no other runners. Quite weird. Feels like when I am training on my own. With e-punching, though. So I navigate carefully, see big cliff above the control. But no control. I drop down to trail, with yellow dot. I am close to control. Aim in at find a sad bag stuffed between the rocks waiting for me. | |||||
| 8. | Straight on line, stay high not to get lost in boulders. Nice approach, drop over knoll and know the controls comes up and this time is does. | ||||||
| 9. | Again I stay high, away from the lake and boulders, almost lose count of reentrants, yet catch myself and figure out which boulder is mine. | ||||||
| 10. | +00:40 | Ha, an easy sprint down past the boulder cluster to swamp. Nope. No bag, no swamp, no money. I curve along the bottom of the hill. Finally I find the bag laughing behind a tree, playing hide and seek. | |||||
| 11. | +00:30 | Definitively a sprint leg. Only 75 m climb to the saddle, then all downhill to another 50m of climb. Just do it is written on the hill side. I climb to the saddle, run for a moment on the trail, cross west of the yellow swamp and climb to the plateau east of the green swamp. Before the control I see the rocky knoll, move over to control. | |||||
| 12. | +01:00 | Up the reentrant, see hill from the trail, except it is the small spur with the other control. While checking the code I fall on the face, literally. Get up and run over to my control. | |||||
| 13. | +00:30 | The plan is to go around the swamp on the east side. But I cut close to the swamp passage and decide use the small corridor between. Works ok, of course I could have gone around the south side of the swamp and would have stayed dry. | |||||
| 14. | +00:30 | The short leg seems long, I look around early. I find the trail, see the swamp below and suddenly see the two boulders. | |||||
| 15. | An interesting route choice. I first want to go along the hill north of the line. I decide that running might be not much fun there. Over the hill is about 25m more climb, from there on cruising down the reentrant. I cross the swamp, go around the hill. | ||||||
| 16. | Kind of puzzling small hills, until I realize that the control is on the drop off with a cliff. | ||||||
| 17. | +01:00 | Take the road first, then it appears open, I cut over towards the control. Lots of rocks and boulders. Around would be faster and more pleasant. | |||||
| 18. | Swamp, slosh to trail and control. | ||||||
| F. |
Total Time Lost - 00:09:40