ARDF (2m) 1:27:31 [3] *** 12.0 km (7:18 / km)
5c shoes: Brooks Running 18
2m race at the World ARDF Champs! 15th place. Not my best race, although considering that I basically never get a chance to practice 2m, also not too bad. Came out of the start and, since we were running downhill and the start was relatively high, I took the time to write down some bearings as I came into the mandatory road crossing. The first transmitter sounded close as I was coming out of the exclusion zone, but I'd just gotten up onto another hill and most of the transmitters sounded pretty close... I spent some time poking around on a small hill, but didn't see the transmitter, and continued on. A few minutes later, the transmitter came back on behind me, and I turned around to come back to it. I spent a while poking around on another wrong hill when it came on again, and this time I was close enough to sprint over to it before it went off.
By now I'd been running back and forth along this hill for long enough to have a good idea of the order of the rest of the transmitters and headed off for the next one. I came to a trail junction and after some waffling decided to go right. Sadly this was the incorrect decision, which I discovered the next time the transmitter came on. I didn't really want to run all the way back up the hill to the trail intersection (about 5 minutes of running away), so I attempted to cut between the two trails on a string of grave sights. The locals who were out tending the grave sights were not impressed by this decision and their glares combined with the fact that it was WAY greener than mapped and had a few unmapped agricultural fields (which were all out-of-bounds) made me decide to head back down to the trail and take the long way around.
The transmitter came back on shortly after I made it up to the trail junction, and I felt good about the new trail. There was a small hill at the next trail intersection with some people milling around looking confused. I decided to head up the hill and saw a guy in a Korean military uniform hanging out on the hill. At first I thought I was about to get glared at again, but then he went to sit down in a chair, and I realized he was a juror. Aha! The transmitter must be close. A bit more circling around the top of the hill later, and I saw the flag a little ways down the side. I headed off to the next transmitter, which I had pretty good bearings to by this point. I crossed a bunch of rice paddies and some canals. My bearings were kind of funny in this section because it was so windy, my antenna was getting blown around, but after poking my head into a few poorly mapped residential areas (where the map looked like it would be possible to get through, but the copious unmapped fences suggested otherwise), I managed to find the correct trail up and over the next hill. I saw someone with the self-satisfied look of a person who'd recently located a transmitter coming down a trail, at the next trail junction, so I turned up that trail, and saw an elephant trail up another hill into the transmitter.
I knew the last transmitter was at the northern end of the map, so I headed in that direction, and managed to get myself on a major trail in the correct direction as the transmitter came on. Sadly, I was too far off to actually find it on that cycle, so I spent a bit of time poking my head into side trails when I once again saw a couple of people coming quickly out of another side trail. I dashed up the trail, saw a small opening off to the side, and found the transmitter on the opposite side of a grave sight. The finish was a few km away, and after a brief debate about going the shorter way or the safer saw, decided to head out the shorter way. This was definitely the better decision with a gently sloping downhill run about half of the way to the finish. A Mongolian woman decided to follow me. I was a bit faster on the downhills, but not faster enough to drop her, especially once we got onto the flat trails near the finish. The run along the lake near the finish felt endless, but I eventually made it. I definitely lost several cycles out there on the first couple of controls, but overall, this was definitely one of my more in-control feeling 2m races!