Race Evaluation

DVOA/Hickory Run: Blue

1.		Over 11km? on this area? in this heat? And only 10 controls. If it looks like a long-O, walks like a long-O, quacks like a long-O, its a long-O. Decide to treat it as such, run steady and pussyfoot around all the rough stuff. This proved to be a good call. Spent the maximum time on the trail to 1 crossing stream right near flag.
2.		Straight.
3.		first half on trail, then straight. Should have done 3 sides of the rectangle on the trail.
4.		Back to trail to get across stream and through green.
5.		Straight, cross trail at bend, then no idea where I was until the flag popped up 5 mins later.
6.		Got a bit left, ran parallel to trail in the woods before meeting it (oops).
7.	+01:30	Drifted right, then hesitant after crossing the stream until finding the big open area.
8.		straight
9.		straight
10.	+05:00	Blew it at the last. Came to an area of lush vegetaion and misread it as seasonal marsh. It wasn't really wet enough. Followed it north to the big open marsh. Back on a bearing, still no flag, bail out to rocky ridge to relocate, then back in.
11.	+00:30	Drifted right, demotivated now.
F.		Although I was vetter for the North American Champs here in 1988, I'd never raced on the area before. As Sergei says, it was tough, but this was an excellent course with long legs suiting the terrain and control sites avoiding the bingo feature which about here. Would be great to run if it were about 50 degrees cooler with the leaves off the trees.

Total Time Lost - 00:07:00