Race Evaluation
Birkhead Wilderness Classic (US Classic Champs): Blue day 1
iansmith
| 1. | Had some trouble adjusting to the 1:15 scale; not very good with my compass. Ran past rock features, then counted reentrants. Saw the control to my right, lower than expected. | ||||||
| 2. | Wobbly around the vegetation; ran down to stone wall, then contoured. | ||||||
| 3. | Plan was to go over the spur, but I drifted left despite exiting ok. Pushed around by vegetation; corrected off fallen tree in the circle. | ||||||
| 4. | Straight. | ||||||
| 5. | Down spur, on left bank of stream, attack from stream bend/cliff. Not good plan because the east bank of the stream was clearly much better running. Slow pushing through vegetation on the left; otherwise ok. | ||||||
| 6. | Up. Saw it from 20m. | ||||||
| 7. | Around to the left of the hill, attacked from the saddle and boulder. Control was higher than expected. | ||||||
| 8. | Plan was to descend along spur, cross the stream below the t-junction and attack from the saddle. Bad compass, bad use of linear features. | ||||||
| 9. | Plan was to go over the saddle on the line - which I thought was a few lines higher than 8, descend the reentrant, and contour along the hill to 9. While my plan was ok, I hadn't read the map well enough to execute it, and I failed to use my compass. It should have been obvious that I was climbing too much, but somehow I managed to ignore that. | ||||||
| 10. | executed ok; after crossing the stream 1/3 of the way on the leg, I ran on the northern bank until I hit the bend, then went up the hill and over. I think 10 may have been set lower than it was on the map. | ||||||
| 11. | executed fine; cross the reentrant, contoured with a very slight rise, hit the trail, attacked on the right side of the big reentrant. I was too high when I reached the circle. | ||||||
| 12. | suboptimal plan; I should have gone straight. I decided to contour and executed ok. | ||||||
| 13. | crossed the stream twice and hugged it to keep track of the reentrants. Straight was probably faster; I checked off the earthbank and little marsh on the right halfway through the leg | ||||||
| 14. | I ran on the right bank until the reentrant, then ran up the spur between the two reentrants flanking 14. Ok. | ||||||
| 15. | Good execution - ran down the spur left of line to the saddle, then careful compass and noting the spur to the west, cross the stream at the cliff/stream bulge, then go up the hill. Fine, but slow on the uphill. Ken spent some time on the trail and was faster. | ||||||
| 16. | Up the hill to the trail, down the trail until it became steeper, compass to the correct reentrant, and down the reentrant. Ok, though bad job compassing out of 15 - went higher than necessary. | ||||||
| 17. | Disaster. I decided to run down the spur over the little hill, cross the stream right of the line, cross the small reentrant to the big reentrant, and run up the huge spur. I hit a stream much earlier than I expected which locally ran NS. I didn't pay enough attention to notice I wasn't in a HUGE N-S reentrant and thought I must have crossed north of the earthbank north of the line. I figured I must have been on my target hill, so after following the stream, I ran up the first reentrant I saw trying to reestablish contact and became utterly lost. I figured things out when I hit a fence and saw big cliffs on my right. 11-12 minutes lost; bad compass, bad visualization of the route, bad distance estimation, weak plan. | ||||||
| 18. | I was mad, so I started orienteering better. Still hesitated at 18 and checked out the northern knoll even though I didn't think it was mine. | ||||||
| 19. | Plan was to go over spur into NE-SW reentrant on line, then pick out the correct erosion gully. Successful, though slow. | ||||||
| 20. | Run in, almost entirely on trails. | ||||||
| F. |
Total Time Lost - 00:00:00