Race Evaluation
Georgia Navigator Cup: Day 1 Red
mikeminium
| 1. | a pretty clean leg, very close to the straight line with slight adjustments to avoid gullies & take adavntage of a short trail segment thru the green. | ||||||
| 2. | started a little right of the line, rapoidly descending the long spur, no problem. | ||||||
| 3. | just right of the line, using the reentrant, then staying just right of the rocky part of the ridge line. Caught a glimpse of Bill Swift 100m ahead near teh ridge top ahead of me & another glimpse of him leaving the controls just as I crested the high point & could see the control. The semi-open area in front of the control was obvious which helped confirm that I was coming straight toward it. Very good min/km considering that the leg had 35 m of climb. | ||||||
| 4. |
Did not like map | Again, slightly right of the straight line to reduce climb a little. After crossing the trail, the green seemed to go on much farther than mapped, slowing me down. I aimed off slightly to the left as I came through the green, and it paid off with a clean approach. | |||||
| 5. | up the right side of the dirch/reentrant, then far enogh right to clear the top of the west sloping gully system, then banked left to cleany hit the control in the top of the shallow reentrant. Navigating well, but the rain and fogged glasses were beginning to become a significant problem. had to give the glasses a good wipe at least once a leg from this point on. | ||||||
| 6. |
Bad route choice Did not like map Hesitated +00:20 | crossed the creek at the trail, up hill along the right side of the gully. intended to go just far enough left to stay out of teh green, but the green extended farther and thicker than mapped & kept pushing me farther west, with the result that I ended up looking straighht at the couple cliffs 150m west of the control & had to turn hard right back up hill to the control. should have bit the bullet & stayed closer to straight line & contours, even though there were some big logs & brushy stuff to get over/through. | |||||
| 7. |
Did not like map | a frustratingly slow leg as the green semed thicker and more extensive than mapped. I knew it was a Kuntsevitch map, so I understood conceptually what to expect, but it was still annoying. aimed a little left so that I could see the ponds and use them as an attack. | |||||
| 8. | NE up along and across the reentrant, bashing through the green to the trail. The climb & green cut my min/km more than I would have liked. SW on the trail, cut the corner at the junction and aimed down the reentrant system to the gullies. The upper ditches seemed less pronounced on the ground than on the map & I wasn't ever quite sure which ones I was seeing, but I knew that if I kept following them down, they'd converge to my control. | ||||||
| 9. |
Underrated difficulty Bad compass work Confused parallel features Bad distance judgement +03:50 | Started off well, down left side of gully thru strip of white woods & left on the trail, ran the rtail past the large boulder. So far so good. At first trail bend past the large boulder, turned left btoo hard and too soon and ran straight to a control in a cluster of boulders. Didn't have my code, but it looked right so I punched anyway. Then I decided I hadn't gone quite fare enough, thinking it was the rocks 100m NE of my control, so I continued farther SSW and promptly hit the park boundary. But there was a cluster of larger rocks just beyond the boundary. So, maybe the boundary or the map is wrong. I investigated, even as I knew I was being stupid, but pretty quickly decided that the first control I punched must have been right, and I started back north toward the trail and next control. Fortunately, I still had doubts and continued to analyze... those boulders that I punched at aren't really on a knoll, even a subtle one, I should be running down a fairly pronounced spur, but I'm not, and finally "Why am I coming out so close to that big boulder by the trail?". At that point it clicked: lleft on the trail to the next major bend, SW to the rocks on the knoll, and puinch. Amazingly, all that from wrong punch to correct oen only took me 4:22, so I figure the mistakes cost me a total of about 3:50. What a fiasco! | |||||
| 10. | north along the right side of the spur, crossed the creek and kept the tributary on my left with a rough pace count and watching for the green vegetation to make sure I ended up in the right gully. A pretty clean leg. | ||||||
| 11. |
Did not check features en route Bad distance judgement +00:30 | Headed north along the left edge of the green which seemd to keep going and going much longer than mapped. When it finally opened up, I turned east to the trail, crossed the trail and: no reentrant, no control. Quickly back to the trail & a quick look with compass showed that I was NW of the bend. Ran a few steps to the bend & east into the reentrant and the control. Didn't lose much time, but verbally kicking myself for not having checked the trail more carefully the first time I crossed it. | |||||
| 12. | +00:15 | NE down the spur, climbed across the creek, NE up the spur, wove around some thickets to teh road, turned right and kicked in hard heading east on the road, watching for the powerlines to join the road. What the...? Screeched to a stop. Power pole right next to the road. Looked behind me. Ran back half the distance to the previous pole, turned into the woods and down the reentrant to the control. I apparently had gone farther east in the woods than I realizerd or intended & hit the road almost directly opposite the control instead of well to the west of it as planned. So much for aiming off. At least I recovered quickly. | |||||
| 13. | NE down the spur to the streams, angled NE up the hill to the road & turned right, left on the track and down the hill to the right of the dumpsters, across the stream and up onto the broad spur. I had thopught this one might be trouble since it was a pretty large, broad feature to use as a control, but visibility was excellent and I spotted the control pretty quickly. | ||||||
| 14. | straight east, keeping right of the tops of the reentrants, left on the road, and thru the clearing to the control vaguely described as "path" ("path spur crossing" would have been more complete & precise. | ||||||
| F. | down the trail to the stream, then angled left straight to the finish. |
Total Time Lost - 00:04:55