Drove to down to NEOOC with Andrew for the long goat
My grand vision of being well prepared fell apart when some car repair extended to 1:30 am. 5 am wake up came fast.
What was not fast was me. Given my physical state I should have dropped down to the middle. Instead I stuck with the long. I felt awful 1/4 of the way to #1!
Since I was slow, that minimized mistakes, although I managed to overshoot #3 despite seeing Sherpes's correct exit. I was very alone by #4.
The course as fantastic- confounding layout and nice running woods (if you could run). Bobble at three joined by 24 (wrong spur down to creek) and a couple other hiccups or careens.
Very glad to have gone down. Thanks NEOOC!
QR (blacker track over Sherpes route) shows other quirks:
1 - which was faster? CW or CCW?
3 - oops
You can see my water stop en route to #7 - (I drank full cups at all three stations)
8 - not sure what I was doing going to the wrong clearing on a slow route. Then I stood about 15' from it and didn't see it, doubled back to the other forest bump, finally argh. Should have skipped
10 - I thought I could use the high speed brain off. 180 bpm to jog downhill on the trail off the road to #11 - not a good sign
14 - saw my first competitor in a long time. He helped a little as I was a bit right.
15 - other competitor gave me a nice target to #15 and helped with 16
17 - Those lines aren't kidding - it's a drop into that creek bed!
18 - oof, hill
19 - oof, hill
20 - oof, hill. two small breaks on the way up. :)
23 - woah, massive fatigue strike climbing up - hands on knees that might explain the
24 - wrong spur! Oops. Didn't notice the west one, so I when I saw one I took that instead of north one. Should use compass more. Took a few seconds to figure out the swamp/creek/rocks to confirm my oops
25 - missed left, came back from road
26 - fun, gave good help to mid? team who missed it from the bottom
29 - A deer saw me inspecting various rootstocks. I thought she might run away, but then she was more like "ah screw it" and continued to snack
F - tried to muster some energy. Considered more beeline but too much stuff to jump over. Not sure if rounding bend helped.