Orienteering 2:00:44 [3] 15.0 km (8:03 / km)
Straight line distance.
Not at all happy with this race. Both physically and mentally this can be regarded as a complete meltdown. Simply put, I failed to live up to what I know I can do. I know I am not in the best shape of my life, but I also know that I can do better (much) better than this.
Here is the race overview from my perspective. Need to do some analysis to figure out what needs to change in my systems.
Started out decently, good pace, in control. 1-2-3, piff, paff poof.
Long leg to 4 - decent (didn't quite nail the first bit of the leg, missed one compass check and lost around 30 seconds from it).
5: Not how I meant to do this leg, let myself get pulled around by a faster runner (I think an Estonian?) who passed me. I went south around the hill, but then looped back to the north refreshment point, when I had been planning on heading further south to the southern refreshment point and then around the second hill. Split was still surprisingly decent.
6: This where things started to fall apart, even if it looks fine on the splits. I was still just behind the Estonian out of 5. I was rushed coming out of the control (not that I was planning on following him, just pushed myself out without checking my compass). Plan was for the eastern routechoice to the east of the vegetation (although looking back the western option was definidently better), but I ended up well east of intended but figured it out quickly. Lost maybe 45 seconds, no stopping, just bloody poor execution due to a lacking compass check.
7: Another failed compass check after coming out of the green. Combined with a lack of a full plan, 5 minute mistake. I was shaken by the previous minor error on 6, and pushed right out of 7 without a full plan. Stupid.
8: Went fine, compass bearing was a little off, but easily corrected.
9: Another solid leg, started to get caught by a few faster runners towards the end of the leg. Happy with this one.
10: Didn't have a good mental picture of where this control was, hooked it pretty bad (15-20 second loss I think).
11: Massive train of around 6 people forms around here... I try to stick with 'em, ends up being a bad choice. Need to have the train running or not built into the raceplan at least somewhat, hadn't even considered it yesterday. Entire group misses control to north slightly (some of the mapping felt a tad wonky right in here), but I was first from the group to correct and lead everyone into the control.
12: Took the gel coming out of 11 as planned right before refreshment stop 3. Two glasses of sportsdrink at this one. Holding onto the tail of the rapidly disintegrating chain along the leg to 13. On my own into the control, and spiked it. Redlining for pretty much this entire leg.
13. Didn't have enough of a plan on this one, but still got the control. Didn't see the pit though.
14. And here is where everything started to fall apart. I didn't have a full plan heading to the control, compass bearing was wonky out of 14, and didn't match up map and terrain well. Ended up lost, and failed to relocate. Ended up using a train of 4 to carry me to a control, and got it figured out from there.
15. Got the angle a little wrong, wrong hilltop. Correctly fairly quickly, but still a bad mistake to make.
16. Good leg.
17. Decent leg, minor error coming into control.
18. Nigh perfect.
19. Happy with this one too, but running speed has dropped significantly. Getting tired at this point.
20. And everything falls apart. Cramping starts on this leg, happy with the leg plan, and firist 3/4 of leg go well, but one failed compass check after rounding a hill, and boom a 4 minute mistake. I'm sensing a recurring theme....
21. Minor hook, 10 seconds (while these do add up, when I'm making tons of 5 minute mistakes, well...).
22. I would really appreciate it if the tapes marking the edge of the arena would be shown on the map. They were clearly visible from a long way away and kind of made this leg feel a little wonky. No real problems though.
23. 3 glasses of sportsdrink through the arena. Control was fine.
24. Control was good, just slow running speed.
25. Leg was good, just legs are barely working at this point.
26. And the legs and brain totally give out. No plan, just kind of not reading the map going in roughly the right direction, and no surprise I blow it. Even when I'm totally dead, I need to tell myself to stop and walk if I have to if that's what it takes to navigate properly. Over ran the control significantly, looped around massively, bloody awful.
27. Decent leg but misread the control circle, missed the fact that the saddle was two contours up, so ended up a saddle too low and took me a bit to figure it out.
28. Hard to mess it up, so thankfully I didn't.
29. Shuffle to go control.
Finish: Stagger to finish line.