Orienteering race 1:28:42 [3] 4.1 km (21:38 / km) +150m 18:17 / km
A very bad race; I'm full of anticipation but grew more disillusioned after each control. Orienteer quite well to #1 but don't see the flag; start relocating, find my attackpoint (top of reentrant) and go back to controllocation, still don't see it. Hmm, start circling, relocating, ending up in the same area until at one point I finally can make out the bag! Ok, I need to concentrate even more and be VERY careful: good orienteering to next control, I know where I am, make out the different shades of thickets, get to the control circle and the same story: don't see the bag. Rats! Same "game", circle, relocate, get back to the same area until I finally see it. Make a mistake to the next one and correct it. Look at the course now, and realise that the next 2 controls should be easy with 100% attackpoints. Head in from a meadow and, again, don't find the bag. Relocate from the cabin and nothing. This is crazy! What's with my eyes?? By now, I feel like sitting down and crying. This never happens in Swiss meets that I can't see the bag when I am so close. I keep circling and see it a little further up than I expect it, when I was looking in the light green thicket as it shows on the map.
The next control I look for on a compass bearing from a water tower. By now, I'm not surprised that I miss it. I am very careful, try to make out the different shades of green, realise that it is on a shallow "back" or saddle, realise where it slightly dips on both sides but can't see the flag. What am I looking for? a rock pile, I am starting to look for rocky ground, but nothing. By now, I am ready to quit, but I just don't want to go through the thick green out to the road. So I wander around, I am getting cold now, then somehow I see the bag, and notice a 40cm high rockpile. (a needle in a haystack?). The rest is an unmotivated walk through the woods, somehow I'm still glad that I got all the controls. But I'm not proud of it.
How does Sharon do that? She has half the time and found the bags with no problem?? It's a puzzle to me. One has to be used to this kind of orienteering.
I found the course to be interesting, good course-setting, challenging legs but the control placements totally off. I would have tried to locate control locations that are more defined and then hang the bags a little more visible (I don't mean visible for hundreds of meters, but reasonable within 5to10 meters). It also seemed to me that that problem was not on all the courses. Some courses had reasonable times, but others were totally questionable when looking at the overtimes and great differences between the different places.