Orienteering race (SOW day 4) 1:09:43 [3]
shoes: VJ Bold 2011
Garr, I feel like i'm making more mistakes as the week goes on!
Today we had to catch a chair lift from the event centre up to where day 2 was, then run 200m vertically down the hill to the start. Was nice to have a race where the finish was well below the start!
Got the 1st control fine in open shrub, and 2nd was another leg running down and across the slope. I sighted what looked to be the open marsh that was my attackpoint and headed for it. unfortunately the different yellows on the map were pretty hard to pick out and it was actually the marsh right next to my control...resulted in me overshooting by a fair bit, and once i figured it out having to trudge back up through the undergrowth - 4mins lost on penny. Bad start!
Decided to concentrate on my nav from there, but in the tight controls 5-6-7 I thought i was navigating fine to 6, picked out the knolls, dropped into the control where i expected it...and found no.7! So checked my compass and headed down to 6, only to miss it! Once i finally got it i headed back to 7...and overshot it! couldn't believe myself! Saw the girl behind me at 7, but she'd just navigated from 5-7 too lol. so got ahead again.
8 was a long leg with not much choice, took it careful and was fine. 9 short leg up the hill, i got a bit too excited with the climb and ended up at the mens control 3-4 cuntours higher.
10-11-12-13-14-15 were good fun tearing down the mtn, then into the pines. 11 i slowed down too early (girl behind me caught me again). 12 was prob hardest leg of the course, dropping across the slope in the forest with no features (clearings were dodge as and hard to pick). Spiked it though. 13-14-15 got some good speed up :)
16-22 were in a blown up 1:5000 rocky part. But way more rocks than mapped, hard to pick up on what was what. 19-20 i should have just taken a bearing to the open and relocated up to the control. But tried to hit it straight off and lost 1.5-2mins on penny. did eventually relocate off the open and it was easy as pie from there.
Rest was good and it felt fantastic to be able to tear down the final hill into the last control and down the chute with no discomfort in my left ankle!
helena did 59.59, I can see 64 easily, even with 2-3mins of mistakes still in there.Pretty damn annoyed with myself. aim is to keep it careful and clean tomorrow, which is up on the nice open stuff below the glacial moraine.