Regional (?) event at Woolbeding Common
http://www.go.routegadget.co.uk/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi...
This would have to be one of the most physical races I ever ran. Combined with the long run the day before, riding to the start and lack of sleep from noisy flatmates I wasn't really in much form for such a hard race.
I'm finding it difficult to adjust to reading maps over here and I think I?ve pinned it down to two reasons. Firstly, I pretty much navigate by contours. Problem is, there is so much more information on maps here, lots more green, tracks, brown point features etc , I'm finding it tough to ignore all the superfluous stuff. - to see the hills for the mounds (forest for the trees doesn't quite fit). Second to that, the topography of the land is fairly different to home. I can't really describe it, but I've never had any problems at home knowing up from down, gullies from spurs etc, but on long route choice legs on this race I was struggling to pick a good route cause I couldn't tell what was up and down. I think the slopes here twist and turn a lot more, whereas back home hills are more simple and rounded.
Anyway onto the mistakes:
1-4: Nothing too bad, but was already feeling heavy in the legs.
#5: My first experience with a brown triangle. I hate brown triangles. I had 3 of these as control sites on the course and there didn't really seem to be anything there. When I questioned was these features were after the race I was told, 'well, they're really nothing'! What they are is old charcoal burning grounds, but now all that's left it a little circle of flat ground. I will never bitch about root mounds in Buckland again.
So for this leg was directly downhill through bracken to a triangle. When nothing appeared I just ran to anything unusual I could see, thickets, piles of sticks, dubious clearing until a big ground of people ran by and I retraced their steps till I found the 'nothing'. Not happy Jan. 1.5 mins lost.
#7: Route choice leg. One cool thing about having such weird hills and abundance of tracks is instead of the usual left, right, straight route choice there's any number of routes you can take for long legs. I started going straight until I realised the downhill was actually an uphill and switched to a wide right leg which had almost no climb. Also made a mistake in the circle so I'm not sure how good my route was - will see what other do in route gadget.
8-15: Was a long slog trying to pick the best line to minimise hills and tough running. Started to feel pretty tired through these ones.
#16: Lazy map reading in low vis pine forest. Ultra sloppy. +2mins
Started to cramp up in the hammies out of 19 and took a of longer track options to avoid bracken. Didn't end up being that bad. Totally rooted by this point.
Getting a little worried that the JK classic is 4-5km longer on a similar map.