Troll Cup day 1, Brown Y course, 1:10000, 5m
3.5 km / 175m climb nominal; course by Phil Bricker
Sunny and low to mid 60s
Route Gadget
1 - Sandy F started a couple minutes ahead of me and I didn't want to go exactly as she had out of start so I jogged up the trail a bit before heading east; it was flatter there anyway. My plan was to hit the rocky spur and find the long cliffline. I seemed to cross more wet areas than were mapped so I hesitated some but kept on my way and found the l o n g cliff and the reentrant at the end (flag was just over the top of the rise from the direction I approached). Maybe lost a bit of time hesitating (but not the 2+ AP says).
2 - straight on the line to the third trail, hitting it just E of the bend, then down it past the light green. Saw Sandy a bit ahead of me
3 - tried to take a different to her toward 3 but kept drifting toward the trail (where I wanted to go anyway, and where I was able to jog past Sandy). Took off at the bend and angled uphill slightly, crossing the stream before the control just above the cliffs.
4 - S L O G to a pretty obvious reentrant that had the cliff. No mistakes, just slow
5 - didn't like the looks of the rocks in the reentrant so angled SW a bit so that I wasn't going straight up another steep climb. Went toward the non rocky part of the cliffline and found somewhere to gently descend then turned into the wide reentrant and headed for the first bouldery thing I saw. No mistakes, just a slow climber. Between these two legs we climbed 80m in about 400m straight line...ugh.
6 - more north than northeast to cut out some of the climb and hit the trail near green swamp so attacked from there, knowing I was looking for a cliff near the water/marsh
7 - exited north and stayed on the east side of marshy area, not seeing the trail (on the map) where it went under the line. Looped around the uncrossable marsh and had some really nice open woods to run through to the stream, crossed the stream, and contoured to the dot knoll, where I could see someone drinking water, from some distance away
8 - out to the building and the road (along which we were parked) then turned left and cut in near the pavilion to run across the field. Passed Allmuth here (whose following I had to deal with at the Oct 2008 meet) and continued along the narrow hill to the control.
9 - skirted around the N end of the marsh and saw a cliff, with what looked to be a flag but as I got closer it was an old metal trim course marker, so I didn't get closer to check it out. If I had I might have noticed the cliff above it but all I saw was a large log and no cliff, so I climbed to the trail and searched farther south just a bit before heading back toward the trail junctions, then found it. Must have been hidden from my view by the log. About 3 minutes lost here, my big mistake.
I'm a good 12 minutes behind Linda K in F65. Was surprised to see Janet F and Mary Jo both MPed (Janet punched the wrong cliff at 6, MJ the wrong one at 9).
Chase start tomorrow puts me at 5 minutes behind the next faster Brown Y runner, and 4 minutes ahead of my follower, so I get to start without too much pressure. Karen M smoked the course in about 46 minutes; I'll start 6th, 18 minutes after Karen.