POTOC Tunstall and Burslem Parks, "Long Hard" course.
2nd / 19
http://www.potoc.dandasparks.org.uk/png/2016-06-04...Very far from top form and took it more as an exercise to break up the long drive back from the Blackpool Dance Festival. I knew I won't be making it to Poole Town race in time so this was mostly on the way as a replacement (kinda) to at least get my brain moving.
With the limited sleep in the last days, and legs very rusty, this was a poor race performance, but glad I did it anyway. Just overall running too slow and also a couple of mistakes, some of it I can blame on the map but some fully mine to own.
#1 - took a safe route but probably would have been faster straight, wasn't sure if I could cut across a strip of green as map had faint colours.
#6 - fairly convinced was slightly misplaced, was looking for it in the veg boundary bend but it was further along, so about 30s lost
#8 - 90deg error after getting into the rough area, noticed way too late, so lost more than 1 min probably
#9 - hesitation in the rough area that was slightly under mapped for its complexity, but I was looking for the wrong feature for a while anyway that did not help matters. About 20s lost
#10 - suboptimal route, want up the bank in what looked on the map like less vegetation but it was uneccessary to curve around. 10-20s
#12 - was working out by this time that elephant tracks were forming so went into green early in what looked like one. This turned out to be a mislead and should have just gone around the green like I had to in the end. 20s
#14 - slight hesitation looking for control earlier.
#17 - Again hesitant in the control circle when control was straight in front.
#18 - was misplaced (apparently the organiser did not fancy going into the undergrowth where it should have been)
#20 to finish - wasn't clear if I could go across the garden area as the red lines covered some important aspects, chose the safe approach to backtrack onto main footpath instead. Judging from the splits it was possible to cut across and so could have shaved about 20s
In all, should have been easily possible for me to win this event on a "normal" form, but I am not disappointed as this wasn't the objective at all.
Key learnings: make sure to sleep enough before a technical race...?