Running warm up/down 1:31 0.3 km (5:00 / km) ahr:132 max:149 shoes: VJ iRock 2016
Orienteering race (Score) 1:00:02*** 8.82 km (6:49 / km) +126m6:21 / km ahr:162 max:177 spiked:30/35c shoes: VJ iRock 2016
Military League South event, 1 hour score in Hawley.
9th / 246
Joined Ian and Becca to go to this event and based on last weekend's conclusion I decided to take this as a training exercise for map simplification. So wasn't running that hard, the objective was being able to pick routes and run them in a way that would be faster to navigate. Basically, be able to do more heads up orienteering by doing plan-simplify-memorise-run.
Very wet event, raining most of the way and wet under foot - one control was in the middle of a wet depression that you had to go knee deep in water to get to. Not appreciated. Varied area and a mixture of woodland, heathland, barracks. Unfortunately the map was quite imprecise (bad) in places, especially the vegetation mapping. Also lots of paths which made navigation look deceptively easy. Probably as a consequence I have made loads of errors, and ended up not collecting all controls within the hour - although not a big issue as that wasn't the objective, but still disappointing.
Rundown of the event with notable navigation aspects: - Took my time to plan the route, started off slower (again). For some reason in my mind I did not want to accept the proper map orientation, so fought the compass and took a while to get going. Not sure why? - 52-39-56-42 OK, compass bearing took me to the right of 42 which was disappointing as only a short distance and tried to be precise, 10s - 53 (compass bearing OK) -33 (good simplification here, through clearing edge then compass bearing) - 41, decent simplification but read control description too late, almost on the road and description was "under bridge" so had to climb back down, 30s - 44, compass bearing was taking me to the right but contours were leading me about 10-20deg to left. Chose to run with the contours and got the control spot on. This was a good leg in that I relied on multiple techniques. Then into the barracks. - 62, lost about 40s here, the control was not in the right place and control description incorrect: description said "Depression", mapped as a knoll, and in reality control was on a path bend...???? - 58, simplified the route well, but control (pit) was mapped in the wrong place, so ran down the spur expecting to hit the control, which was nowhere to be seen. Chose to run right around the contours (again not mapped very well) in case I could not see it from the curving of the spur, it wasn't there. Ran back the other side and the pit was there - definitely more underneath the veg boundary edge than mapped. So lost about 1 min but at least was in control. - 63 to 61, started to run to the dead end clearing bet realised in time so turned left to run around the dark green, still lost about 20s - 61 to 64, was confused and started to run to 59 but realised 64 was next up, so longer route than needed, but once I was on the right track simplified vegetation well. - 59, gone the wrong way around the barracks and got into a dead end with the building work, bad simplification here, should have been looking out for the vegetation on the left before turning right, but did not make out that unique feature when planning. Probably my concentration started to fade at this point, the 4th mistake in a row, to be followed by another one? - 60, definitely lost in the details coming out of 59, plus 64 wasn't flashing and having run into Becca at 59 (again) told her that, she replied that it didn't flash for her either, so probably I was distracted. Read the map all the way out to the road through the paths, which meant when I looked up and took the building from the right I did not realise it was the wrong building. So heads up would have helped coming up from the forested bit, which I could not do as I wasn't doing simplification well enough here. So went into a dead end before realising and turning back, losing 1m+ here to 60. - To 57 pulled myself together and probably was OK, but coming back out of 57 I saw Becca down on the ground next to a big puddle in clear pain. Stopped to help her with another runner, got her to sit down on a bench and made sure she was OK before continuing on. - 65 took a while until I made sense of the map scale again and it fit the terrain but then it was easy into the control and then out of the barracks. Big puddles, very wet now. - 46,48, 32. The vegetation around 32-52-55 was definitely not right, got caught up in heavy green coming out of 32 that should not have been there, lost 30s+. - 51 again mapping wasn't quite right here, 10s lost (corrected) - 55-49, quite good pacing here on the path before diving into green to the left, spot on with distance, which is good as I am not using pacing too often. - Then the biggest simplification error I have made - out of 49 to 50, simplification was (right at path junction, run until there is a knoll in a clearing to the left and take the path to the right). The only issue was that the "right at path junction" was too much simplified, should have been taking care of direction, as it ended up being a 60deg mistake, ending up running an extra 600m+ due to running 2 sides of a triangle instead of 1. So maybe about 2,5m lost here - 36 then 45: another bad decision on simplification. Plan was "path, left into white woods after junction, run parallel to the road until finding the two knolls just before hitting the green". The problem was that the green area wasn't there, it was all white so ran past the knolls. I have registered them but thought they were way early, so relied on a map I should at this point known to have been not precise with vegetation mapping. Also if I read the control descriptions I should have taken the knolls from the other side just in case, as the control was there. So another 1m lost. - 31, got into the woods too early from the clearing, misread where I was, but found the control OK it just would have been faster otherwise, and a risky mistake that could have cost time if the area had a different layout - 54 imprecise compass bearing to the right, strange but corrected easily relative to other features, 10s - 47 the pit with knee deep water, again was it really necessary???? At this point I was running out of time, so headed towards the finish area. The map was definitely not right here either, extra paths but I was stupid to stop and hesitate, so again did not simplify the map well, but then realised I should just continue anyway, which I did. Managed to get to 37 and then back to the finish just in time.
So lots of mistakes and I think the learning from this for me on simplification is to be careful with what I choose as feature for simplification, and to have insurance policies to rely on to avoid these mistakes. I probably subconsciously thought the area was easy (relative to a lot of others it actually was), but that lowered my concentration and then made mistakes. Shouldn't do that next time.