Race Evaluation
US Champs: Day 1 Blue
jjcote
| 1. | Planned to follow the ridge until the green ended, then cut perpendicularly across the big reentrant. A really bad job of distance estimation had me crossing when I was about halfway there, which was probably better anyway. Found a control at the top of a ditch, with a puzzled-looking Kata Smith next to it, and then realized where I was and went through the mottled/light green (which was fairly thick and slow) to get to the control. | ||||||
| 2. | Pretty much straight, paying very little attention to detail before the road and a lot of attention after it. | ||||||
| 3. | Drifted left, and hit the stream above all of the ponds. Took the trail and attacked from the north. Nice distinct trail, even had a guy with loppers doing some maintenance work. (See Sunday's comments for the details of my undoing here.) | ||||||
| 4. | On compass, hit the ridge and visibility was zilch. Didn't know whether I was left ofr right, guessed I was right, but I was wrong, as I found out when I saw the road. | ||||||
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| 7. | Started out going a bit too far to the left, corrected, and made it to the hilltop okay, though it looked like the kind of place where I would have expected a little yellow ink. No trouble finding the control, with Tom Carr coming in right after me. | ||||||
| 8. | Tom pulled steadily away and was out of sight well before the halfway point. Pretty much straight, trying to pick a line that was going to get me through the green easily, and again paying much closer attention after the road. | ||||||
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| 10. | Doh! On compass, noticed a couple of cairns just before I hit the stream junction. Went up the big reentrant, climbed the ridge, and found a confused Jeremy Colgan, but nothing that looked like what the map showed, way too much green. Ran up and down the spur a couple of times, scratching my head, then remembered the cairns, and realized that I had been at a stream/ditch junction, not the stream/stream junction, and was one big spur too far to the east. Directly to the control from there. | ||||||
| 11. | Started about 90 degrees off course, but I hit some thick stuff that knocked some sense into me. | ||||||
| 12. | Right-hand route, handrailing on the stream and avoiding green, and attacked from the marsh. | ||||||
| 13. | South to the trail, followed it to the beaver ponds, crossed the stream and read contours to the control, arriving just before Ross who came in from the SW. | ||||||
| 14. | Keeping up with Ross, thogh we both overshot to the next ditch. | ||||||
| 15. | Left the road at the bend, and intentionally went down off the ridge a little early so that I could countour along and make sure I didn;t miss the control. Except that the vegetation pushed me back up onto the ridgetop, and I wound up overshooting anyway. | ||||||
| 16. | Pushed through the green, and could hear Sergey Velichko (I think) screaming off to my left as he forced his way through the thorns. Lost contact near the end of the leg and bounced off the road. | ||||||
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| 18. | Road around, through the woods from the road junction and popped out by the last cabin. | ||||||
| 19. | Drifted left and hit the ride. | ||||||
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| F. |
Total Time Lost - 00:00:00