Orienteering race (Puttenham Middle Race) 1:00:45 [4] *** 5.0 km (12:09 / km) +200m 10:08 / km
spiked:13/27c weight:71kg
Was really in the mood for this, but persisting problems with back (I was dosed up on ibuprofen) undermined confidence in body and ability and the run soon became a total disaster. Nowhere could I seem to make the map fit the ground, although I do feel some of the vegetation mapping was very unhelpful and the choice of control sites, I thought, often neglected some of the map's worst ambiguities. Others coped, though, and I must take most of the blame. Sort of circled round to 1, trying to find a bit of map I could identify on the ground, and was poor exiting too. But wheels came right off at 3 when the bend in the path never came up, and then an unmapped junction did, and I concluded I wasn't where I thought I was. Within a few metres of the control I gave up and went to relocate and thus lost 4 mins. But 6 was even worse. Again, left 5 badly (distracted!), got two path junctions confused and started to hunt among bracken (for a vague veg boundary?) in an area of scattered trees. I soon gave up and only really found the control by a lengthy and depressing process of elimination. After this I just jogged, feeling downright miserable. At 15 I went up the wrong reentrant, and when I crossed to the correct one I was way too high. Very poor mapping here made relocation almost impossible and I'd thrown away another 2 to 3 mins. The map was no help with nav at 18 (what spur?) and 19 (no thickets!), and I continued to ship minutes through the last three controls mostly because I couldn't tell what sort of vegetation the map symbols were supposed to represent. Upward of 15 minutes of mistakes on a nice running day in a good area. Things can only get better, can't they?