Night O' race 1:11:00 [4] *** 6.2 km (11:27 / km)
spiked:5/12c shoes: Nike Trail (Blue)
Night-O at Cuyahoga National Forest, Kendall Lake (NEOOC).
First Night-O with my new headlamp. First of all, the light worked great. I was running 10 cells for a total of 8000mAh at 6V. I finished my second battery on Thursday night and did the final packaging of the one I'd already made.
It is so much light. I could go as fast as I could run (which isn't fast) on the trails. It was easy to identify nearby terrain and other features. I was surprised that the "central spot" of the headlamp doesn't penetrate as far as I'd expected. In some big fields I had to navigate by compass to features some of my handheld flashlights would have lit up. No complaints though. I'm basically completely satisfied with the headlamp.
I need to ask about big headlamp etiquette from some people used to being in the woods with lots of other people with similar lights. Once I was running down a trail towards some people facing me, and they asked me to turn it down. I was on 20W, and I switched down to 10W and apologized. After that I tried to point it off the trail to keep the beam off of other people. I still flashed a few people momentarily going in and out of the punch.
Even going was a little bit of a wild hair event. It was about 7 hours round trip for a little over an hour of night-O. I'm really glad I did it. I had fun. The woods were nice. I had forgotten how steep some of the hillsides were.
I'm calling the spikes 5 of 12. It really should be 6, but I'm not counting one trail route where I wussed out of a complicated night-O leg. Spiking on a white-level approach is just wrong.
I had one major error. I went directly from 3 to 5. This involved skipping the shortest leg on the course and going to 5, which was the longest leg. I so spiked 5, but as I punched the box for 5, I saw that 4 was empty. I eyeballed it extra close, looking for faint pin holes---nothing---then looked at the map and realized my mistake. I ran back and got 4, then came back to 5 and repunched.
It was a little funny because Stan passed me just before I got to 5 the second time. He was running well, and didn't even slow down as he ducked into the woods. I was thinking, "He's about 10m too soon, and he's got the wrong angle." I clipped a thicket going in and turned left and there it was---again. I need to tell him I had already been there, but I'll add that the first time took only about 3 seconds longer once I left the trail.
Another big headlamp anecdote. As Stan and I left 5, and he repassed me, I noticed how dim his headlamp was. (That's really impressive because I'm pretty sure he won with a time of 42 minutes.) Anyway, as he passed me, I flicked my lamp from 10W to 20W, and he used the extra light to speed up. It was pretty cool.
One thing you learn about night-O is to always trust your compass. You usually have an idea of which way to go, but you learn to check the compass and realign yourself. I was leaving 7, and my compass just kept pointing me more and more right. My brain was saying, "Man, your natural sense of direction is really messed up." And then I thought, "Better lift that compass off the map." I did, and the needle swung back, pointing me more left. Stupid staples. They didn't get me this time, but I've been gotten before.
The last real leg, 11-12 was a trail leg with lots of turns. As I got to the last trail junction, I found a really indistinct junction, and took it. It was overgrown with vegetation, but I could sort of make out the trail. I needed to go right at the fork (if I remember the map correctly), and I thought I did, but then I found myself dead-ended into some steep earthbanks along a lake. I could go back and try to find the higher trail, or...(sweeps big headlamp toward the lake), I could jump into the soft marshy lakebed and hope I don't sink. The water was pretty low, and my feet only sank into the muck once or twice. Good times.
Meet quality issues.
1. I was really impressed with NEOOC's one page per person registration system. I had never seen anything like that, and I thought it was a neat system. (Certainly the biggest surprise of the night was the turnout. NEOOC had a lot of people---and for a night-O!)
2. The map bag I used was very flimsy. I'd have to verify with Mike, but I think 4mils bags are what we use. They're so much nicer than the thin bags.
3. If I had one real complaint, it would be that the course was too easy. That's actually not completely true. My complaint is really that a lot of the distance was for 2 long legs that were essentially trail runs. I don't think these easy legs should be able to buy themselves onto a Wacko course. (That's what they called it. That and "Difficult".) I'm a little conflicted, because both were neat legs in that they weren't trivial. (I wouldn't have objected to one or the other, but in a row like that just seemed like wasted distance.)
3-continued. My big complaint with the 2004 NAOC Red courses is essentially the same as this complaint. Not enough route choice. Sure, some little route choices, but no real "long leg" that just stops you dead-in-your-tracks while you decide what to do.
Finally, sort of as a disclaimer, I should explain my "Meet quality comments." I don't consider myself an expert in orienteering meet quality. Spike wrote a blog entry some time ago about meet quality, and I decided to try writing down complaints or kudos about meets I attend in the hope that it helps to improve future events. The last thing I want to do is run someone away from designing courses or running events. My personal meet quality experience includes a local course I set with a misplaced control where no one told me outright that it was misplaced. Spike mentioned that there is a strong bias against complaining because of the concern about running off volunteers. I'm writing this paragraph because I really worry about that. But if it were me, I'd want someone to tell me, and that's why I'm doing this.