Running warm up/down 4:19 0.68 km (6:19 / km) +10m5:53 / km ahr:147 max:157 shoes: VJ iRock 2016
Orienteering race 1:32:09**** 10.84 km (8:30 / km) +280m7:32 / km ahr:157 max:175 spiked:18/18c shoes: VJ iRock 2016
Croeso 2016, Day 1, course 2. 12th M40L.
Tried to go out early with an open start to dodge the rain. That did not work - started to rain from about 1/3rd way in so got totally soaked and could not use magnifier which made a difference. Also made this choice conscious of the disadvantage as expected that later runners will find a lot of elephant tracks leading into controls. In my case they were basically non-existent and I had to do precision orienteering. Well, should have.
It was a tough challenge both physically (did not manage to dodge a lot of the sand dunes and could not dodge many anyway) and navigationally - a lot of intricate areas and you could be standing 2m from the control not seeing it. Which means - I enjoyed it immensely even with the knowledge that all my weaknesses showed under this test!
The main time losses were controls 3 and 4 - got 95% of the way to Control 3 OK but then darted left too early in what I thought was the reentrant I needed, then started a treasure hunt in the circle that lasted about 4:40. Then the route between control 3 and 4 I managed to mess up completely - the plan was to go slightly right around the green then left around the majority of the sand dunes. In the end I tried to recover the time lost before (classic mistake) so ran too hard without much thinking and was pushed too far right by the sand dunes before the green, and never recovered - should have had the mental strength to correct but just ran through the dunes which of course massively slowed me down, not only physically but navigationally as well as I had to slow down/stop/correct often through them. Lost anything between 4-6 minutes there too.
Without this I would have been up there between 3rd-5th place.
There were some further smaller mistakes and suboptimal route choices including a few annoying ones towards the end, I probably faded mentally even though physically I felt OK.
Anyway, good fun and how great it would be to be subjected to such challenges more often, as there is little chance to learn from this sufficiently to put into practice consistently.