ARDF 80m race 1:37:55 [5] *** 6.0 km (16:19 / km)
spiked:3/5c shoes: Nike GoreTex
80m ARDF at Umherst Park near Raleigh, NC. Setter was Nadia Scharlau (former ARDF World Champion). Nadia shortened the course probably 1km or so, because we needed to drive home 9 hours, and because we whined about the Saturday length (not really, but sort of). It was probably 5km or so straightline (I correct this later). I had a great day physically. My lethargic Saturday somehow prevented me from being *really* sore, so I felt pretty good, except for one blister on each foot. I ran about as much as I walked, which is really impressive for me, especially for this distance. The course was technically about as difficult as they get, with the controls in areas that required reasonably close-in bearings to select the right feature of many (for example spurs) and somewhat difficult bag placements with little long distance visibility (which is okay for small ARDF events, unlike regular O). I lost time on 5 (my first T), when I had a bad initial bearing and underran it somewhat, and on 4 (my fourth T), when the minute was up before I could take my bearing for off-cycle hunting (which I usually try to take in the last 10 seconds of the minute). I lost nearly 5 minutes because of that. I also failed to draw the start and finish exclusion circles on my map before the start. Usually that's a pretty minor thing, but here it could have cost me 10 minutes or more on 3 (my fifth T). I made some good decisions, and had some good bearings, and pretty much spiked that one, so I didn't lose anything. Unlike yesterday, I was feeling great. It's hard to believe my performance could be so different on the second of two hard days, but it was. The biggest "take-away" for this event was that I need to work on taking and drawing bearings on my map. Once again I had several bearings with enormous angular errors. I don't know where these are coming from. I must fix this.
