NEOOC Night-O - Kendall Lake -
QuickRoute
Yes! No light issues, that made night-o *way* more fun. Randy planned this with butterfly loops for the "Wacko" (= long) version, which were good fun, and I guess gave some spectator value from the shelter just across the way. Night-o spectating means you watch lights ascend and descend the hill, attempting to guess who might belong to said light based upon it's speed and brightness. =)
Anyways, I'd say a B- for my race. I was doing better about reading control descriptions ahead of time and at least half of the time knowing my exit strategy before I got to a control. What didn't go well was actually exiting in the right direction (terrible at 4). I also had bad route choices to some of the controls - climbing steep reentrant walls is super-duper slow (see multi-red-spotted track to 15; picture continually slipping backwards downhill, unless you find a tree/root to grab onto), so the best route is the one that you avoid that, as much as possible. Still, I apparently didn't learn that while running, based upon my gully traverse to #16....
1- Noted Stan went through parking lot, but got my map, couldn't see why he might do that, and went straight along the lake. Got me a bonus uphill... Little confusion of little paths around the E end of lake
3 - Hesitation upon encountering stream, should have had more confidence I was N of junction.
5 - Really, exiting 4 was the problem, I 90 degreed the map, so was heading off kinda towards the parking lot. Took me ~60m to realize? Was surprised to realize.
8 - Was going right on line, with plan to encounter trail on far side of stream and then cruise into the control. But I didn't see the trial under the line, so when I encountered that, followed the plan for the other trail, which didn't work and ended up doing a little bit of headless chicken before making sense of everything again. Bob executed much better and pulled back ahead of me here...
9 - Catching up to Bob on the trail, saw him slowing and entering the woods, so flustered and didn't think so hard about which spur as I entered and choose wrong one, had to scamper one to the W when I realized.
10 - Here and elsewhere, bridges were great trail-attacks, you can't miss 'em!
12 - Ug, terrible! I came up with a plan, run on bearing til next spur, go down that spur, encounter trail and find control. But I apparently just stayed on my bearing, decided some other reentrant was 'the bottom' and tried to find trail on other side, which just wasn't there.
15-16 - My poor route choices, to 15, think being high would have resulted in less gully-wall-climbing slowness, while to 16, immediately getting out to trail would have, it might be a bit too ingrained in me to follow compass line...