Winchester Urban, Vet men 40-54 (age 54.25), 6.4km
(inner LH knee hurt the whole way - eh? Injury site from OMM 2015).
Comically bad; I sat my A levels at Peter Symonds college in 1982, & many parts of the course, I knew exactly where the control would be, no "visualisation" required as i grew up here.
Yet I got to the site of no 2 and there was no flag (hint: an EMIT pad is 2 dimensional, and NOT a 3D control flag; which were designed in 3d , funnily enough, for a reason).
After spending nearly 2 minutes inside bushes getting scratched and about to bail (as Nigel Bunn did), the girl starting 1 or 2 mins after me arrived. I was by now totally stressed & fucked off , as my urban race of the autumn was already in pieces, and i told her the control wasn't there, I'd been hunting for 2 minutes. "But it's just here" she said, and calmly pinged her touch free EMIT against a pad hidden INSIDE THE THICKET which I could not see.
Ran past her 15 seconds later saying "that's my race over; just like that!" & won no 3 as an anger split (I never win splits, ever, so I was clearly furious). She tried to stay with me, this old loser who was unable to see a pad inside a thicket, but shortly i was alone as i reeled off a sub-4 min km.
Continued with major sadness until no 13, where the no 13 on the map conveniently obscured the previous way in; in i went, and searching behind wheelie bins is a new low, until someone realised we were in the wrong bit & out we came. Another minute+.
Hard running from here all the way and hey presto, yes I did not check in detail the control desc. for the last control. Past caring. I'm sure this was what they intended, & highly amusing for onlookers, but TBH it was (but wasn't ) the final straw as i had to run out again (the "walk" of shame) & go round & come in again & do even worse than I was doing anyway. Shit result.
(the last straw? the girl who'd caught me at no 2 arrived shortly afterwards, having read her description, and did not enter the finishing field but went to the control instead)
Nigel Bunn (who'd finished after me & was DQed - missing no 2) & I went back to the no 2 site together, he'd never found it, and we got there, and he was like, oh you're kidding me, I can't be expected to see that. Description: thicket, East side. It wasn't on the side. it was on the east side of the inside stem/"trunk" of the thicket. We both "complained" (expressed our disappointment) to the controller, but to no avail. I would never have found it, either, had said girl not turned up & shown me (immediately) where it was. If you're reduced to brushing around inside thickets, on the off chance the control hasn't actually been nicked, & you may *just* locate it in there somewhere, it's no longer the running sport i enjoy.
SHOULD EMIT PADS ALSO HAVE 3D NORMAL O FLAGS UNDER THEM. I say yes. If you're 3m from the "flag", & you can't see it, something's wrong.
Discuss.
Result: Whatever
http://www.baoc.info/sites/default/files/2018/11/0...Strava: whatever:
https://www.strava.com/activities/1943685419