Harvester relay, Rushmore, Leg 3, 8.5km, 21 controls.
Area description from the clubs website: "Roughly three square kilometres, it is remote and mostly very runnable but has an extensive path network. There are a number of penned areas allowing for forest regeneration and it is mainly deciduous with undulating contours. A very nice area." Has whoever wrote this ever been to the area????
Team: Will, JonX, me, Ross, Roger, JonM & Daniel. Steady runs from Will and Jon put me out in about 4th about 5 minutes down. Had been warned about the vegetation and to run extra distance around paths before so stuck to that. Unfortunately it made little difference once in the circle as there was still nettles and brambles all over the shop.
Started slow but clean enough (scary 2m nettles to get through on the way to #4). Realsied soon enough that many of the tracks (big and small) were very hard to find in the dark, which was a bit of an issue as once you lost them you were consumed by undergrowth. Took safe routes but lost several minutes at each of #6, 8 and 10 as well of bits of time at #9 and 12. Was running with A SLOW guy all this time as just couldn't get a bit enough gap to break away before hunting for the next control.
Things got worse at #13 when a huge umapped track completely through me, losing time on the leg and then hunting in the bracken for a pit. Caught the SLOW guy up again at the spectator (#17), lost a bit on #18 and got a bit of a lead by #20 but then knocked my head torch off on the way to the last control and consequentially missed it.
Hugely frustrating run, just couldn't find anything cleanly, lost in the region of 8-10 minutes and came back in much the same position as I went out. On the positive side there was lots of easy running as I was actually moving reasonably well on a lot of it and I still managed to enjoy Oing in the dark, but while I appreciate all the work that went into this event, why can't someone put a Harvester on a decent map that's not full of nettles and/or bracken for a change?
Thankfully the competition ran out of depth later in the night allowing JonM to overturn a big time difference and to give Daniel a safe enough lead, which he them smashed to give us a clear win.
Map