Race Evaluation
Flying Pig IX: U.S. Short Course Championship: Blue
Tundra/Desert
| 1. | Follow along... | ||||||
| 2. |
Bad route choice Did not plan ahead Unused to terrain +01:30 | Went straight and quickly found myself inside a nasty ditch with un-climbable sides. I guess I should have checked downstream for passability opportunities, but panicked and went upstream. Once I got out, went S and hit the trail. Once I was at the trail, and given how scared I was about crossing the slippery ditches, the all-roundabout way through #4 and #3 seemed reasonable... so I did it. Saw Fredrickson coming out of #4— thought I had made up about a minute on him, but he actually started 9 minutes before, so I had made up almost 4. My route was way too creative, though, to be advantageous—the lack of climb did not make up for the extrra length. I estimate that I lost 20 seconds while stuck in the ditch, and 1:10 on the extra length. Floowing John was Andrew Komm. He looked like he was moving OK, so I though he'd be a nice target to try to catch. | |||||
| 3. | |||||||
| 4. | This was easy as I'd been there already... | ||||||
| 5. | Crossing the ditches had already proven hazardous, so the trail route seemed a no-brainer. I had trouble crossing the stream that ran along the major trail! so fed along on the non-trail side of the stream until I was 100% sure that I could cross. Shortly after that, saw Leif on the way to #2. He stopped dead while crossing the main trail. | ||||||
| 6. |
Underrated difficulty Did not read control description +00:10 | I got to the top of that whole reentrant system and, having not had studiied the descriptions, expected the control to be fairly close to the top. But it was not there, so I thought it'd be in the next system, and went forward only to take a quick look to my left and there it was, in that same system but at its W side and halfway down the slope. Just hesitation, really, not an extra-path error. | |||||
| 7. | |||||||
| 8. |
Bad compass work Confused parallel features +00:05 | A West Point guy was crossing the power line, and I followed him to the next system W of the control, then corrected easily. | |||||
| 9. | The first butt-slide upon leaving #8... As I got to #9, I saw Komm leaving towards #10. I could not see the bag until I got to the main stream, and then it was to my right. | ||||||
| 10. | Another butt-slide while crossing the E–W stream. As I got past the water stops, I decided to cross the stream valey high, well above the toothy earthbanks. It worked just peachy. Passed Komm on this leg... | ||||||
| 11. | ... but didn't realize that as Andrew was down by the creek looking for #10—I thought he was on the way to #11. The beaten elephant path led right into the worst green, but I followed it. Was not bad. | ||||||
| 12. | This was the classic reactive-Vladimir leg. As usual, instead of having a plan, I simply go in the general direction (wherever seems easiest to get through, in this terrain), and pick out features on the way and correct my direction accordingly. As I got to the main N–S stream valley, I saw Dave Frei. He also had my #12, but was moving N along the E side of the stream, whereas I crossed the stream at 90o and went E because I found the little path. The path soon became obstructed, so I looked for better going uphill and found it. Then I saw the clearing ahead and ran there; found myself as I got there. Attacked from the top of the hill. As I got lower, I could see the ditches to my right, and also Dave, so went there. We got to the control at the same time—Dave by carefully reading the map and planning in advance, and on a much straighter path; Vladimir by going wherever seemed less thorny. I think I lost a bit to people of similar pace on this leg, mostly because my route ended up being so far off straight; on this particular leg I would have benefited from being more proactive. | ||||||
| 13. |
Did not plan ahead +00:25 | Went straight-ish and crossed the stream, but yet again, reactively, climbed up to the boundary of the medium green with the embedded blobs of dark green; and decided I didn't like the green, so dropped back down to the creek. Proceeded until hit the fence and it didn't register at first... then corrected. The route seems too far off straight to be optimum... | |||||
| 14. | |||||||
| 15. | Another evil reentrant just W of #14... I was happy to see that there was a good way up, up the bottom of the obvious side reentrant. Managed not to butt-slide for the third time. ... There was probably a better way to go instead of crossing the dark green upon the immediate approach, and the elephant path took a 90o turn at the stream 120 m SE of the control. But I foolishly proceeded, knowing that despite being slowed down, I'd have a very good view of the relief and would most likely nail it. I did. Don't think this was much of a loss. | ||||||
| 16. | Given how non-threatening the green had so far been, I just went at it, pretty straight. It worked. | ||||||
| F. | Held off Mihai who never appeared in my field of vision! Victory. |
Total Time Lost - 00:02:10