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Sunday Aug 24, 2008 #
Orienteering race 2:21:00 [4] *** 5.5 km (25:38 / km)
shoes: Nike Trail (Blue)
COC 2008 Long---Course 9---Map says 7.6km, 305m, but I didn't do the whole course. My GPS says I did 7.1km, but that seems too long. My guess is 5.5km.
I was pretty dazed when I finished. I was more than a little bit angry. I had major errors on 1, 2, and 4. So much that I decided to shorten the course by going from 6 to 14 and then to finish from there. (I had another 24 hour drive starting from the parking lot.)
When I was on the course, it felt like the map sucked, that the controls were bingo placements (especially 1, 2, 4, and 14-omg). {Edit---It felt like 2 was bingo, but it wasn't.} I spoke briefly to AZ at the finish, and I tried to be objective. I wanted to take some time to look at the map and especially my GPS track. This terrain is outside my comfort zone, and I purposely took some aggressive routes rather than take easier trail routes. (It was a 24 hour drive to Fundy, so running trails was a low priority.) I don't remember exactly what I said to AZ. I think I said the vegetation mapping made no sense to me, the controls were often in green.
Now, almost 2 weeks later, I've had time to look at the map and my GPS tracks. The tracks are shocking to me. I'm pretty sure they are very inaccurate {edit--- inaccurate regarding say 50m accuracy---It misses *a lot* of the little jinks, especially at 1 where I was all over the place. At 1, I was primarily in the reentrant bottom or within 20m of it. The track shows I massively overshot the control, and that's just not true. I was in the reentrant at least 100m north of the powerline}. I have an old Garmin 201, and it doesn't do well under foliage.
Here is my track laid over the map.
The first leg looked pretty scary based on my experience from Saturday. I first considered the road to the powerline (coming into the control backwards), but it seemed long, and frankly, when I see a course setter do that, I feel like they're telliing me the straight route is doable. My plan was to run to the fork in the road, go right into the tongue of white about 100m, crossing a shallow reentrant (the stream mapping stops here, so it must be subtle), then go almost exactly SW for a few hundred meters, then turn directly south into the marshy reentrant (again, no linear stream/ditch/marsh mapping). I thought I nailed the execution. I found the marshy reentrant, but no controls. I didn't aim off, so I didn't know whether I was right or left. I picked left for about 20m (not shown on the track), thought I recognized the marsh and vegetation, and turned around. The map lost me again, and in a few minutes I popped out on the powerline. I looked for some attackpoint, but found none. I tried to see if I was in the right or left shallow reentrant. It looked like the west-most one to me, so I followed the low spot generally NE. I found 207, not 206, again thought I knew where I was, but I missed 206 as I went by. Maybe 100m too far, I turned around and starting going back-and-forth across the stream (these aren't shown well on the track). I was looking for a rock pile in the reentrant and a rocky pit uphill a little from the rock pile. When I found the rock pile, I was shocked at how low it was. There were a whole lot of unmapped rock features way taller than this thing. I looked uphill, and saw the flag. I think the first leg took me 38 minutes.
The track, viewed objectively, shows I overshot the control more than 100m, missed coming back and overshot 200m, and then left 1 directly south rather than SW (where I intended to go). Subjectively, I can't reconcile this track. It seemed farther from when I hit the marshy reentrant until I hit the powerline. It seems that the track shifts sideways from when I was going SW to when I was going NE. It seemed a lot more controlled to me than what this track shows.
Number 2. Seeing this track might explain a lot, but I still am not sure I trust it. When I got to the power line, I thought I was in the same spot as the first time. This clearly shows two different locations. It shows I was 100m east of where I thought I was when I entered the forest from the road. If that is true, it explains why I had so much trouble on this leg. What it doesn't explain is how different the terrain was from what the track shows---If I imagine following the GPS line, it doesn't match what I saw. I can't reconcile a 100m GPS error, so I'm going to assume it's basically correct. (Although take a look at the errors on the Friday Sprint map---changing direction has a way of getting 50+ meter errors.) Either way, it's not pretty. It was so frickin' green in here. That favors the GPS=true hypothesis. I'm gonna admit screwing up this leg. That's the simplest explanation. I forgot to mention that the obvious route here was to run the trail and use a rock as an attackpoint. After my experience on 1, I actually considered and rejected that route. I figured that missing that rock was very likely and that the straight route was less risky and shorter. I didn't anticipate or see the parallel error.
3 was a good leg. I took the trail around and just read the map right to the control. {Edit---Although it was fairly hard to navigate because of the low visibility.}
4 was another spot I decided to go straightish rather than bail out to the trail. My plan was to find 13 on the way, since that would be a very sure fix (since the setter and vetter and controller would have verified it). I didn't find 13. I found a parallel feature with a tape numbered 109, but no flag. I assumed I was about 100m NE of 13, but only because that feature is in the white and no course setter would use the other ones in the green. {Edit---I'm half joking about the green. The parallel feature W of my 13 is also in the white. I didn't know which one it was that had 109 in it.}
I couldn't read features other than a shallow stream bed, which I thought was the one I needed. I couldn't see a control, I so I kept going to the trail, where I went N to the junction---I did not detect the mapped saddle on the trail, even though the GPS says I passed it twice---And I was looking for it. It appears I was high about 50m on the way east across the hillside. It seemed to me I was following an obvious shallow streambed, but it's not mapped that way. Ran in to 4, then straight up to 5.
I probably wouldn't have used the feature at 5 because of the green. I didn't have any trouble though.
At this point I was approaching 2 hours, and I knew Mike would be finished already or finishing soon. I had been looking at 14 for some time. It just looked crazy. It was a vague hillside with a big green patch. When I saw it, my first thought was that it was a fairly boring, trivial leg. Basically you'd aim for this huge patch of first green (roughly 100m diameter) in a large white forest. Find your way through it, and when you pop out into the white forest on the other side, boom, it'll be right there.
The route I took from 5, might be completely different from the route from 13. Both are scary to me. The route from 13 gives you an apparent closer attackpoint (a stream-end/spring almost directly S of 14).
I set my compass and took off. Pretty soon I hit a big green patch, and soon after that I popped out into an area of white forest. I saw the formline spur shape, basically exactly like the control feature except the rocks were on the wrong side of the spur. Hmmmm. No feature on the map with with the rocks on the wrong side, but one possible parallel feature. I turned N and...didn't find the feature or the control. I turned W for 100m since there wasn't an obvious white forest. I found more green, so I went S. I saw a lot of rocks, so I went back along a white/green border. Found nothing. Gave up on 14. Headed to 15. When I popped out on the powerline sooner than I expected, it was clear all the rock detail I saw wasn't mapped.
Went to 15, said "Hi" to the people manning the stealth cam, then up to the finish. I was passed by one of the early Course 1 finishers. (Mike and I had early starts.) After I talked briefly (and very circuitously) to AZ, I kept my mouth shut and headed back to the car.
I don't want people to think I thought the course was terrible. I did make mistakes on it. I did think the placements tended toward extremely difficult. I missed all the complicated areas of the map. I am nearly certain that these areas would be much easier than the bland areas I had the most trouble with (1 and 4 and 14).
I have two complaints with the course. The first is that I felt the placements were bingoish. There just was't enough good map around the point features to justify using such small features. I probably would have used more reentrant junctions {Edit---and stream bends---point locations along linear features. Stuff you can find reliably.}. This felt very much like a long middle to me (even though I missed most of the course).
The second complaint is the map. I can understand bad vegetation mapping. What I can't understand is the mapper's decision to obfuscate the map by breaking the linear features when they were most subtle. A good example is the first "stream" I crossed on the way to 1. The map shows a stream to the west that stops. When I crossed it where there is no stream mapped, it had no depth, but it was an obvious streambed of rocks (the same color as the forest floor, sure, but it was there). I think this map would make a lot more sense with a few more linear features on it. Failing that, some form lines to help see the linear features would've helped.
{Third Complaint---Rock Features. I'm used to a sliding mapping standard, where the rocky areas are simplified, but the obvious stand-alone rocks are mapped when they're the only rocks around. I was amazed at the unmapped rock within 100m of 1 and 14, and to a lesser extent at 4.}
I was pretty dazed when I finished. I was more than a little bit angry. I had major errors on 1, 2, and 4. So much that I decided to shorten the course by going from 6 to 14 and then to finish from there. (I had another 24 hour drive starting from the parking lot.)
When I was on the course, it felt like the map sucked, that the controls were bingo placements (especially 1, 2, 4, and 14-omg). {Edit---It felt like 2 was bingo, but it wasn't.} I spoke briefly to AZ at the finish, and I tried to be objective. I wanted to take some time to look at the map and especially my GPS track. This terrain is outside my comfort zone, and I purposely took some aggressive routes rather than take easier trail routes. (It was a 24 hour drive to Fundy, so running trails was a low priority.) I don't remember exactly what I said to AZ. I think I said the vegetation mapping made no sense to me, the controls were often in green.
Now, almost 2 weeks later, I've had time to look at the map and my GPS tracks. The tracks are shocking to me. I'm pretty sure they are very inaccurate {edit--- inaccurate regarding say 50m accuracy---It misses *a lot* of the little jinks, especially at 1 where I was all over the place. At 1, I was primarily in the reentrant bottom or within 20m of it. The track shows I massively overshot the control, and that's just not true. I was in the reentrant at least 100m north of the powerline}. I have an old Garmin 201, and it doesn't do well under foliage.
Here is my track laid over the map.
The first leg looked pretty scary based on my experience from Saturday. I first considered the road to the powerline (coming into the control backwards), but it seemed long, and frankly, when I see a course setter do that, I feel like they're telliing me the straight route is doable. My plan was to run to the fork in the road, go right into the tongue of white about 100m, crossing a shallow reentrant (the stream mapping stops here, so it must be subtle), then go almost exactly SW for a few hundred meters, then turn directly south into the marshy reentrant (again, no linear stream/ditch/marsh mapping). I thought I nailed the execution. I found the marshy reentrant, but no controls. I didn't aim off, so I didn't know whether I was right or left. I picked left for about 20m (not shown on the track), thought I recognized the marsh and vegetation, and turned around. The map lost me again, and in a few minutes I popped out on the powerline. I looked for some attackpoint, but found none. I tried to see if I was in the right or left shallow reentrant. It looked like the west-most one to me, so I followed the low spot generally NE. I found 207, not 206, again thought I knew where I was, but I missed 206 as I went by. Maybe 100m too far, I turned around and starting going back-and-forth across the stream (these aren't shown well on the track). I was looking for a rock pile in the reentrant and a rocky pit uphill a little from the rock pile. When I found the rock pile, I was shocked at how low it was. There were a whole lot of unmapped rock features way taller than this thing. I looked uphill, and saw the flag. I think the first leg took me 38 minutes.
The track, viewed objectively, shows I overshot the control more than 100m, missed coming back and overshot 200m, and then left 1 directly south rather than SW (where I intended to go). Subjectively, I can't reconcile this track. It seemed farther from when I hit the marshy reentrant until I hit the powerline. It seems that the track shifts sideways from when I was going SW to when I was going NE. It seemed a lot more controlled to me than what this track shows.
Number 2. Seeing this track might explain a lot, but I still am not sure I trust it. When I got to the power line, I thought I was in the same spot as the first time. This clearly shows two different locations. It shows I was 100m east of where I thought I was when I entered the forest from the road. If that is true, it explains why I had so much trouble on this leg. What it doesn't explain is how different the terrain was from what the track shows---If I imagine following the GPS line, it doesn't match what I saw. I can't reconcile a 100m GPS error, so I'm going to assume it's basically correct. (Although take a look at the errors on the Friday Sprint map---changing direction has a way of getting 50+ meter errors.) Either way, it's not pretty. It was so frickin' green in here. That favors the GPS=true hypothesis. I'm gonna admit screwing up this leg. That's the simplest explanation. I forgot to mention that the obvious route here was to run the trail and use a rock as an attackpoint. After my experience on 1, I actually considered and rejected that route. I figured that missing that rock was very likely and that the straight route was less risky and shorter. I didn't anticipate or see the parallel error.
3 was a good leg. I took the trail around and just read the map right to the control. {Edit---Although it was fairly hard to navigate because of the low visibility.}
4 was another spot I decided to go straightish rather than bail out to the trail. My plan was to find 13 on the way, since that would be a very sure fix (since the setter and vetter and controller would have verified it). I didn't find 13. I found a parallel feature with a tape numbered 109, but no flag. I assumed I was about 100m NE of 13, but only because that feature is in the white and no course setter would use the other ones in the green. {Edit---I'm half joking about the green. The parallel feature W of my 13 is also in the white. I didn't know which one it was that had 109 in it.}
I couldn't read features other than a shallow stream bed, which I thought was the one I needed. I couldn't see a control, I so I kept going to the trail, where I went N to the junction---I did not detect the mapped saddle on the trail, even though the GPS says I passed it twice---And I was looking for it. It appears I was high about 50m on the way east across the hillside. It seemed to me I was following an obvious shallow streambed, but it's not mapped that way. Ran in to 4, then straight up to 5.
I probably wouldn't have used the feature at 5 because of the green. I didn't have any trouble though.
At this point I was approaching 2 hours, and I knew Mike would be finished already or finishing soon. I had been looking at 14 for some time. It just looked crazy. It was a vague hillside with a big green patch. When I saw it, my first thought was that it was a fairly boring, trivial leg. Basically you'd aim for this huge patch of first green (roughly 100m diameter) in a large white forest. Find your way through it, and when you pop out into the white forest on the other side, boom, it'll be right there.
The route I took from 5, might be completely different from the route from 13. Both are scary to me. The route from 13 gives you an apparent closer attackpoint (a stream-end/spring almost directly S of 14).
I set my compass and took off. Pretty soon I hit a big green patch, and soon after that I popped out into an area of white forest. I saw the formline spur shape, basically exactly like the control feature except the rocks were on the wrong side of the spur. Hmmmm. No feature on the map with with the rocks on the wrong side, but one possible parallel feature. I turned N and...didn't find the feature or the control. I turned W for 100m since there wasn't an obvious white forest. I found more green, so I went S. I saw a lot of rocks, so I went back along a white/green border. Found nothing. Gave up on 14. Headed to 15. When I popped out on the powerline sooner than I expected, it was clear all the rock detail I saw wasn't mapped.
Went to 15, said "Hi" to the people manning the stealth cam, then up to the finish. I was passed by one of the early Course 1 finishers. (Mike and I had early starts.) After I talked briefly (and very circuitously) to AZ, I kept my mouth shut and headed back to the car.
I don't want people to think I thought the course was terrible. I did make mistakes on it. I did think the placements tended toward extremely difficult. I missed all the complicated areas of the map. I am nearly certain that these areas would be much easier than the bland areas I had the most trouble with (1 and 4 and 14).
I have two complaints with the course. The first is that I felt the placements were bingoish. There just was't enough good map around the point features to justify using such small features. I probably would have used more reentrant junctions {Edit---and stream bends---point locations along linear features. Stuff you can find reliably.}. This felt very much like a long middle to me (even though I missed most of the course).
The second complaint is the map. I can understand bad vegetation mapping. What I can't understand is the mapper's decision to obfuscate the map by breaking the linear features when they were most subtle. A good example is the first "stream" I crossed on the way to 1. The map shows a stream to the west that stops. When I crossed it where there is no stream mapped, it had no depth, but it was an obvious streambed of rocks (the same color as the forest floor, sure, but it was there). I think this map would make a lot more sense with a few more linear features on it. Failing that, some form lines to help see the linear features would've helped.
{Third Complaint---Rock Features. I'm used to a sliding mapping standard, where the rocky areas are simplified, but the obvious stand-alone rocks are mapped when they're the only rocks around. I was amazed at the unmapped rock within 100m of 1 and 14, and to a lesser extent at 4.}
Note
Probably the biggest mistake I think the course setters made was to choose features with very small "capture areas".
When I check out a control location, I try to check how far you can miss the feature/bag and still find it the first time by. I call this "capture area". You can draw a line around the control showing where you see the feature or flag. Big capture areas are easier, but often more fair. Little capture areas are appropriate when the map is very good, with a lot of detail; for middles. For courses where a compass approach is necessary, I try to make sure reasonable amounts of error by the competitor fit inside the capture area of the control. Longer compass approaches mean the capture area must be bigger. If this doesn't make sense, let me know, and I'll add some visual aids. {And hopefully, the compass approach just gets you to an area where you can identify where you are enough to then navigate into the control.}
An example here might be 1. It's a point feature close to a linear feature. That ought to be easy to find. Yet I went by it *at least* once without seeing it. When I did see it, I was probably 4m away from the flag. (And you know, it's mapped as a pit, but the appearance from the reentrant is a knoll. It seemed like a big pile of rocks shaped like a doughnut, rather than a pure negative feature. I didn't get a good look at it.
On paper the courses look very good. It just seems like a crap shoot when you're trying to find them for real.
When I check out a control location, I try to check how far you can miss the feature/bag and still find it the first time by. I call this "capture area". You can draw a line around the control showing where you see the feature or flag. Big capture areas are easier, but often more fair. Little capture areas are appropriate when the map is very good, with a lot of detail; for middles. For courses where a compass approach is necessary, I try to make sure reasonable amounts of error by the competitor fit inside the capture area of the control. Longer compass approaches mean the capture area must be bigger. If this doesn't make sense, let me know, and I'll add some visual aids. {And hopefully, the compass approach just gets you to an area where you can identify where you are enough to then navigate into the control.}
An example here might be 1. It's a point feature close to a linear feature. That ought to be easy to find. Yet I went by it *at least* once without seeing it. When I did see it, I was probably 4m away from the flag. (And you know, it's mapped as a pit, but the appearance from the reentrant is a knoll. It seemed like a big pile of rocks shaped like a doughnut, rather than a pure negative feature. I didn't get a good look at it.
On paper the courses look very good. It just seems like a crap shoot when you're trying to find them for real.
Saturday Aug 23, 2008 #
Orienteering race 1:12:38 [4] *** 3.1 km (23:26 / km) +125m 19:30 / km
16c
One scary middle course at the COCs. Course 9, same as F21.
Map
After seeing the wooded part of the Friday sprint, I was a little scared of the middle. I read Wil Smith's advice for navigating at Fundy, and that just made it worse. Because the model map was 1:5000, Mike and I decided to skip the model. I heard from several people that it was really scary.
My plan was to basically do what I did at Saskatoon last year, which was to navigate slowly but cleanly, and hope to beat a few of the fast people.
Here is my track laid over the map.
When I saw the first leg, I just planned to take it in steps, leapfrogging from feature to feature, and to mostly rely on the contours. I'm a spur and gully navigator---not fully comfortable in the oddly detailed areas---and I find I fall back on that a lot. I made a few little jinks right and left, and then Sandy Hott (who start a few minutes ahead of me) ran by me right-to-left. I went about 5 more steps and decided to look around. When I turned to the left, she was already gone, but there was the flag.
For the second leg I set the compass and then just ran on the needle very roughly, running whereever I could find light vegetation. I hit the big stream, found a reentrant on the other side, climbed to the top of the hill and tried to match up the map. I thought I was near a saddle on the map, but I really didn't see it when I was on the hilltop. I went a little farther, found a dot knoll that might be on the map and boom right into the control.
3 was a short leg, but the simplification of the map was killing me. Not a whole lot was matching up. Popped up to 4 with no problem.
5 was the longest leg. On the way to 2 I'd seen Louise Oram running in the streambed towards 5, and I just thought, "No way am I doing that." There just wasn't a good attackpoint to leave the stream; plus it looked steep. (Later she told me she wasn't in the stream long.) I went straight west across the stream, then basically contoured on as best as I could. I had set my compass, but the hill seemed to be a better guide. About 2/3 of the way to 5 I realized I had no real idea exactly where I was. The vegetation just didn't line up. There were a few mapped clearings (or areas of ROST), but there were clearings everywhere along my route. Then I realized that the huge stream to the west was a catching feature, and all I had to do was get over there and relocate. I was hoping to hit a little hilltop next to a little marsh. I went straight west until I saw the land going up and then saw the little hilltop and the flat area north of it where a marsh might be. I turned south and the control was 50m farther.
6, 7, 8 went fast, although I was a little left on 7.
I saw Mike Minium leaving 8, and we were going in the same direction. I was a little more left, but as I crossed the stream we came back together. I lost a few minutes here. I saw people climbing the spur, so I went one stream more and climbed up. I was supposed to go up 3 lines, but it was only about 1. I wasn't sure if the map was bad, because features were lining up, but then there was no flag and the reeentrant was much longer than I expected. Mike (who later told me he knew where he was and had a much longer leg) had gone north up the hill. I went about 90 seconds farther and then turned north. I found a flag on a rock, then right into my control.
10 was literally a precision compass leg. I picked up a few features along the way, but the compass worked fine.
11 was the same thing. I didn't even have to re-set the compass. I felt like a doofus on 11. It was on the freaking road, and yet I hesitated running hard. I actually stopped near the road to verify some features, and then turned downhill and into the control. Stupid stupid stupid.
I walked really slow across the road because they were throwing away the leg.
The road was the obvious choice to 13, and I started to take it. But I had read the note at the start, which said the road shoulder was acceptable, but as I ran the road, I thought I must have misread the note. Maybe I missed the "not" or something. So I turned back to the elephant tracks and ran towards 13. Probably 3 minutes lost here. I found the other control and just didn't realize what the map was telling me. I finally lined up the map with my compass and realized the road angle was wrong, and that I was way short of my 13. (I'm not really mad about the note. It seemed the book said one thing and the note at the start said another. I'm more mad at myself for being unsure about the ruling was. Not taking the road cost me probably 5 minutes. The leg sort of sucks as a middle leg if the road is in bounds. There are better ways to get a tempo change than an easy leg like this (easy from the road).)
Going to 14 I misread the map. I read the control as being on a little hilltop, but I found another control first, turned right onto the hilltop but didn't see any rock piles. Then I looked closely at the map and saw the hilltop was really a reentrant. I turned back around and headed into the low spot and saw the rocks and the flag. This inside-out map reading happened to me several times during the sprint Friday. It's a very rare mistake for me, but I did it at least 4 times in Fundy.
15 just didn't seem to be right. The vegetation was wrong and I was expecting the rock on the plateau rather than up the hill.
I got left going to the go control.
A really nice course. Very difficult because the map just wasn't what it needed to be. I thought there were a few too many very short legs. It didn't help that the 5-8 section was pretty green and slow.
I don't know what to think about the finish loop. I see in Tiomila and Jukola the forkings that let certain runners see only one control but make other runners have to run by one to get to theirs. I find that really disconcerting and even unfair, especially when the controls are close together. I much prefer to set where the two runners might use a common attackpoint, but then diverge in two directions into their controls such that they don't see the other control.
The most egregious was my 14, control 73, where I think the other control was actually in the same circle that I had. (I may be wrong about that.) It seemed really close.
A lot of people had trouble on this course. I had a fairly clean run, but I really think I got lucky. I walked all but maybe 700m, but my heart rate was above 150 pretty much the whole race, so I wasn't slacking off. I had probably 6 minutes of errors, and hesitations worth a few minutes more.
I really can't complain too much about the setting. The controls were in the right spot, and the legs were doable in almost all cases. The mapping of the vegetation in particular made it extremely hard, although on the leg to 5 I couldn't even get the contour detail to line up most of the way. The basic spur shape was right, but the little squiggles just wouldn't line up.
Map
After seeing the wooded part of the Friday sprint, I was a little scared of the middle. I read Wil Smith's advice for navigating at Fundy, and that just made it worse. Because the model map was 1:5000, Mike and I decided to skip the model. I heard from several people that it was really scary.
My plan was to basically do what I did at Saskatoon last year, which was to navigate slowly but cleanly, and hope to beat a few of the fast people.
Here is my track laid over the map.
When I saw the first leg, I just planned to take it in steps, leapfrogging from feature to feature, and to mostly rely on the contours. I'm a spur and gully navigator---not fully comfortable in the oddly detailed areas---and I find I fall back on that a lot. I made a few little jinks right and left, and then Sandy Hott (who start a few minutes ahead of me) ran by me right-to-left. I went about 5 more steps and decided to look around. When I turned to the left, she was already gone, but there was the flag.
For the second leg I set the compass and then just ran on the needle very roughly, running whereever I could find light vegetation. I hit the big stream, found a reentrant on the other side, climbed to the top of the hill and tried to match up the map. I thought I was near a saddle on the map, but I really didn't see it when I was on the hilltop. I went a little farther, found a dot knoll that might be on the map and boom right into the control.
3 was a short leg, but the simplification of the map was killing me. Not a whole lot was matching up. Popped up to 4 with no problem.
5 was the longest leg. On the way to 2 I'd seen Louise Oram running in the streambed towards 5, and I just thought, "No way am I doing that." There just wasn't a good attackpoint to leave the stream; plus it looked steep. (Later she told me she wasn't in the stream long.) I went straight west across the stream, then basically contoured on as best as I could. I had set my compass, but the hill seemed to be a better guide. About 2/3 of the way to 5 I realized I had no real idea exactly where I was. The vegetation just didn't line up. There were a few mapped clearings (or areas of ROST), but there were clearings everywhere along my route. Then I realized that the huge stream to the west was a catching feature, and all I had to do was get over there and relocate. I was hoping to hit a little hilltop next to a little marsh. I went straight west until I saw the land going up and then saw the little hilltop and the flat area north of it where a marsh might be. I turned south and the control was 50m farther.
6, 7, 8 went fast, although I was a little left on 7.
I saw Mike Minium leaving 8, and we were going in the same direction. I was a little more left, but as I crossed the stream we came back together. I lost a few minutes here. I saw people climbing the spur, so I went one stream more and climbed up. I was supposed to go up 3 lines, but it was only about 1. I wasn't sure if the map was bad, because features were lining up, but then there was no flag and the reeentrant was much longer than I expected. Mike (who later told me he knew where he was and had a much longer leg) had gone north up the hill. I went about 90 seconds farther and then turned north. I found a flag on a rock, then right into my control.
10 was literally a precision compass leg. I picked up a few features along the way, but the compass worked fine.
11 was the same thing. I didn't even have to re-set the compass. I felt like a doofus on 11. It was on the freaking road, and yet I hesitated running hard. I actually stopped near the road to verify some features, and then turned downhill and into the control. Stupid stupid stupid.
I walked really slow across the road because they were throwing away the leg.
The road was the obvious choice to 13, and I started to take it. But I had read the note at the start, which said the road shoulder was acceptable, but as I ran the road, I thought I must have misread the note. Maybe I missed the "not" or something. So I turned back to the elephant tracks and ran towards 13. Probably 3 minutes lost here. I found the other control and just didn't realize what the map was telling me. I finally lined up the map with my compass and realized the road angle was wrong, and that I was way short of my 13. (I'm not really mad about the note. It seemed the book said one thing and the note at the start said another. I'm more mad at myself for being unsure about the ruling was. Not taking the road cost me probably 5 minutes. The leg sort of sucks as a middle leg if the road is in bounds. There are better ways to get a tempo change than an easy leg like this (easy from the road).)
Going to 14 I misread the map. I read the control as being on a little hilltop, but I found another control first, turned right onto the hilltop but didn't see any rock piles. Then I looked closely at the map and saw the hilltop was really a reentrant. I turned back around and headed into the low spot and saw the rocks and the flag. This inside-out map reading happened to me several times during the sprint Friday. It's a very rare mistake for me, but I did it at least 4 times in Fundy.
15 just didn't seem to be right. The vegetation was wrong and I was expecting the rock on the plateau rather than up the hill.
I got left going to the go control.
A really nice course. Very difficult because the map just wasn't what it needed to be. I thought there were a few too many very short legs. It didn't help that the 5-8 section was pretty green and slow.
I don't know what to think about the finish loop. I see in Tiomila and Jukola the forkings that let certain runners see only one control but make other runners have to run by one to get to theirs. I find that really disconcerting and even unfair, especially when the controls are close together. I much prefer to set where the two runners might use a common attackpoint, but then diverge in two directions into their controls such that they don't see the other control.
The most egregious was my 14, control 73, where I think the other control was actually in the same circle that I had. (I may be wrong about that.) It seemed really close.
A lot of people had trouble on this course. I had a fairly clean run, but I really think I got lucky. I walked all but maybe 700m, but my heart rate was above 150 pretty much the whole race, so I wasn't slacking off. I had probably 6 minutes of errors, and hesitations worth a few minutes more.
I really can't complain too much about the setting. The controls were in the right spot, and the legs were doable in almost all cases. The mapping of the vegetation in particular made it extremely hard, although on the leg to 5 I couldn't even get the contour detail to line up most of the way. The basic spur shape was right, but the little squiggles just wouldn't line up.