Race Evaluation
BATONA 500: Day 1 Blue
mindsweeper
| 1. | I went to Batona 500 despite having had bronchitis for 5 days. In combination with the red-eye flight, my preparations for racing were less than optimal. | ||||||
| 2. | On trail through the green, then skirted the spur into the reentrant. | ||||||
| 3. | Straight, using bigger reentrant as attackpoint | ||||||
| 4. | Straight again, climbing the spur early and skirting it. | ||||||
| 5. | +01:00 | Tried to go straight in order to find major system of spurs and reentrants just SW of the control. Ended up much further north, which I should have noticed in terms of crossing the major trail later than expected. Ran back on the smaller trail until I could see the spur and found it easily from there. | |||||
| 6. | Straight - easy to see the clearing. | ||||||
| 7. | Straight, using hill on left side to navigate. | ||||||
| 8. | Straight - found the clearing W of the control and had to correct to the right. | ||||||
| 9. | To trail and back into the forest. Not sure whether straight would have been better. | ||||||
| 10. | Straight, using clearing as navigation aide. | ||||||
| 11. | On trail until junction, then slightly right on compass and counting fire ditches. Left on the correct ditch and ran until I saw the control. | ||||||
| 12. | Straight until I could see the ridge to the right. Then followed it in. | ||||||
| 13. | Straight using hilltop on right. | ||||||
| 14. | On compass, although I stopped by the control in the white clearing "just in case". | ||||||
| 15. | Straight, using contour features. | ||||||
| 16. | +00:10 | Right around the hill. A bit too far right, and had to come back around the green. | |||||
| 17. | +07:00 | About halfway I realized this was going to be a tricky control. I decided to use the reentrant / trail intersection as an attackpoint. When I hit the trail I thougth I was to the right of the reentrant, although I wasn't very certain of this... After running NE for a while, I found something that looked like a match and left the trail. I'm a bit upset with myself for not knowing better. Instead of relocating and losing 30 seconds, I was anxious to keep spiking controls and instead lost 7 minutes. I eventually hit the light green to the NE of the control. Wishfully thinking that I might have hit the dark green much further south, I ran in the direction of the trail/clearing, and instead found a spur. I now realized exactly where I was and found the control by running south across the spurs and reentrants. | |||||
| 18. | Straight, counting reentrants. | ||||||
| 19. | +01:30 | Missed to the left and found the sign at the trail intersection. | |||||
| 20. | +00:20 | Missed to the left again. Not concenttrated enough. | |||||
| 21. | Managed to not get distracted by all the other controls I saw on the way. | ||||||
| 22. | Didn't hit the trail as early as I had hoped. | ||||||
| F. |
Total Time Lost - 00:10:00