Race Evaluation
DVOA: Harriman A Meet: Blue
jjcote
| 1. | Mostly a good run, but punctuated with moments of total disaster. In retrospect, I recall that I had a splitting headache for most of this run, that was kept somewhat in the background by the fact that I was exercising (my first move upon getting back to the car was to pop a couple of Excedrin). So I think my concentration was probably off due in part to that. First leg I started out quickly to get away as fast as possible from the other person with the same start tme as me: Michael Commons. Missed left and overshot, but by only a few meters. | ||||||
| 2. | Just left of the line. | ||||||
| 3. | Around to the left, same route as Sergei. But I was kicking myself, thinking I should have gone right. Saw Adam Rudner leaving as I was coming in. | ||||||
| 4. | Pretty much straight, stayed higher on the hillside for the first part and got ahead of Adam who was down lower. | ||||||
| 5. | Overshot just a hair, wound up a line or two low, but knew enough to turn around right away. | ||||||
| 6. | A bit left of the line, crossed the indistinct marsh where it's skinny. | ||||||
| 7. | Right of the line, saw a number of people here (on other courses). | ||||||
| 8. | +12:00 | I am a moron. Instead of going south to the trail, I went more diagonally, or so I thought. Crossed the stream, and shortly afterwards started climbing the hill. I was a little puzzled by the fact that I didn't notice the trail, but kept going anyway. YO, IT'S A BIG JEEP TRAIL, STUPID! Up, up, up, hmm, here's some laurel, that's funny. Don't see any green on the map. How strange. Something's not right. I better head down. Oh, trail. Y'know, I think I might be close to Times Square. Scoot up the trail a litte more, and... yep, TImes Square. Well that was dumb. Okay, so I shouldn't have gone up the wrong hill in the first place. Once I did, I should have gone down, crossed the trail, and gone up the big reentrant. Even after I was at Times Square, I could have taken the convenient trail that heads SE and goes most of the way to the control. But I took the trail that goes SW. Figured out pretty soon that I was going the wrong way, but there was a lot of undergrowth, and it was hard to cut over. So I went way up on the bare rock stuff before I found a way down. Finally headed toward the control, and saw Adam when I got up there. And I proceeded to blow the control, missing a little low and checking another reentrant first. What a dope. The only possible consolation I have is that this is hillside where there's a known magnetic anomaly that kicks compasses off by about 45 degrees clockwise. And that's what I did. Was my compass off? Who knows? But if I had read the map, it wouldn't have mattered. | |||||
| 9. | Better. Went screaming down the rocky hillside, largely to intimidate Peggy, who had showed up right behind me (she later said she started to follow, but there was no way she could do that). Got to the bottom with no broken bones, and headed off in hopeful pursuit of Adam, who I never saw again. Down to the small trail, cut the corner to the big trail, followed that until I cut across to the two clearings, and went diagonally up the hill from there. | ||||||
| 10. | +10:00 | Did I say I was a moron? No, I'm a total and complete moron. In order to go west, I started out north, then turned right, and circled 270 degrees around the control before I was finally going the right way. Things started out okay, along a route that was right of the line. About halfway there, I was in terrain that I had mapped, and I realized I was close to the big granite dome that's 250 m north of the straight line, a prominent landmark. I caught a trail and ran right past it. From here, it was a simple matter to continue on that trail until it came down off the bare rock area, and then I'd be right on the line with about 300 m to go. But did I look at the map and come up with that plan? Noooo, I decided I'd be clever and cut down off the high ground sooner. Right though the nastiest area in that section of the map. I knew that. I mapped that trash. Why did I go that way? Next thing I knew, I was in the stream valley 500 m north of the control. Managed to slip in the stream and skin my hand on a rock, and then I had an unnecessary 10 line climb to get back up, and lucked into the control, even though I had no attack point. Ai yi yi... | |||||
| 11. | Well, it was just a matter of going uphill, so I managed to not screw it up. | ||||||
| 12. | Directly down to the road, and ran downhill (saw Eddie going the other way), cutting back uphill into the woods just past the end of the pond. 8 minutes to get to the base of the climb, and 8 to climb up. Saw Vadim when I got near the top, but he didn't seem to know where he was so I forced myself to ignore him, and found the control no problem. | ||||||
| 13. | Pretty straight, a bit left of the line (went though the clearings at the end of the dirt road), and straight in from there. Vadim slowly pulled ahead of me on this leg. | ||||||
| 14. | Keeping up with Vadim until the very end, when I overshot about to the edge of the circle. | ||||||
| 15. | Trying to keep moving fast, and looking forward to aspirin. My feet had gotten wet but not particularly muddy on the course, until just before the last control when one went in the gook. | ||||||
| F. | Looked back, wondering why the cluesheet said 99, but I had just punched at 66... |
Total Time Lost - 00:22:00