On the afternoon of the second day of the Harriman training camp, we ran the Middle Distance course from the 2003 US Team Trials; the winning time was Brian May's 31:30. I was fatigued from an exhausting morning, rainy weather, and insufficient sleep during the week. I was not moving very fast in general, but I did have good flow in the second half of the race.
We self started; I started a few minutes ahead of Andrew Childs and Emily Kemp, both of whom are both faster and more technically sound than I. I got into the map fairly well, and had only minor difficulties on controls 1-5. On control 6, I had a major error and lost about five minutes when I made a nontrivial parallel error; Alex Jospe ran past me and told me I was in the wrong spot just as I was moving to relocate. I then had a very solid race on the last 8 controls with good route choice and flow; I was especially proud of how I handled control 11 by attacking through a prominent reentrant system to the left of the line.
I talked with French team member
Francois Gonon on the way back from the finish. He some interesting commentary; foremost, he noted that contours are by far the most important and reliable feature on a map, particularly with the advent of Lidar. With n mappers on a region, you will get ten different maps, but the brown lines should be invariant. The complexity of maps is growing with time, making it all the more difficult to read the contours.
I really enjoyed interacting with the French team in general, and François in particular; despite the vast disparity in our abilities, he was amicable and instructive.
Splits:
1. 254 overshot the control (30 seconds)
2. 239
3. 143
4. 604
5. 256
6. 944 overshot, parallel error (5 minutes)
7. 946 route to the right along the stream, up the reentrant, over the hill
8. 159
9. 505 slow through the green
10. 134 attacked too high (20 seconds)
11. 837
12. 203
13. 319 too high; hit the narrow cliff corridor and had to backtrack (1 minute)
14. 233
F. 39