Training Log Archive: David_Waller

Event: DVOA Ridley Fox Trot and Ridley Orienteering Riddle
 

DVOA, Ridley Creek SP, Red course. A pretty fun course, and exceptionally well-set. I purposefully went slowly and carefully, and made only a few minor navigational errors. But it was very slow, and honestly I'm not sure that I could have really gone much faster. Half way through the course, I consciously thought "at least I'm not having to climb the hills at Middle Creek!".

28 controls, and all but a few legs were very very short -- like less than 100m. Looking at the map more globally after the race, it's clear that the course designer had very little to work with -- probably 85% of the park is dark or medium green, and there is a ton of head-high greenbriar. The short legs were necessary to route people through the very little bit of open woods. It's not clear to me that this park ever should have been mapped - every red course through it will need to be almost exactly the same. Nonetheless, the map is outstanding. It doesn't have Zherdev's name on it, but I'll be very surprised if he didn't draft it.

Two exceptionally picky and minor coursetting problems probably cost me 15 seconds of time. First, if a rootstock is 0.4 m high, it should say "0.4" in column F -- not ".4"; it's very easy to mis-read in the field. I figured that a 4 meter rootstock would be visible from 100m away, and lost a couple seconds confirming that the control was actually on a little tiny one. Second, the control circle for #21 should have been cut to reveal the gully.

Red - Splits

Slow jog along the Delaware-Raritan canal, felt really horrible. My left hip definitely could use some stretching and rest.