Race Evaluation
Billygoat Run at Mt. Tom: Billygoat
jjcote
| 1. | After my quasitraditional joke about being out in the lead for a few seconds, I failed to look at the map closely enough to see the superior trail route to the right, and instead went roughly straight, sidehilling. I got high enough in the reentrant 80% of the way there that I hit the trail and ran on it for a little bit with Dave Onkst and a couple of other people. | ||||||
| 2. | Instead of going up and down a lot ofreentrants, I decided to drop down about 10 lines to get into flatter terrain. I was by myself down there, but was happy with how it went. Eventually I wound up with Jim Arsenault, Alar, and Carl Childs as we approached the control. | ||||||
| 3. | With those guys, plus Nadim, I think. Just basemap out there, but it was a big enough feature that it was really easy to find. | ||||||
| 4. | Pretty much just a grind up the hill, had to go a little further through the saddle thanI realized at first. Mario came through about here. | ||||||
| 5. | After going through the saddle, Nadim and Alar were sidehilling, but I just went straight down into the reentrant and got ahead of them. At the control we ran into Erin, Tracey, and Mary Jo -- I think Mary Jo was probably on her way to #2. | ||||||
| 6. | Another uphill trudge, and caught Brendan here. | ||||||
| 7. | My biggest mistake of the day, I guess. It was my intent to cut down to the lower trail and then drop to the parking lot, but I followed the trail too far around, then wondered why I couldn't see the parking lot, and went into the woods and continued along the hillside, and the next thing I knew, I saw people ahead of me climbing from right to left. Huh? Glanced at my compass and realized that I had followed the hill all the way around and they were on their way up the hill to #6, and I was now going the wrong way. Now instead of a trail route, it was all through the woods, and the people I had managed to get away from were now slightly ahead. | ||||||
| 8. | People were wondering whether to go lreft or right around the green, but I suspected it wouldn't be bad, and just dived down the steep slope and through the porous laurel. But I was a little too far to the right when I entered the woods beyond the road, so I didn't get ahead of anybody. | ||||||
| 9. | |||||||
| 10. | All the way around on roads/trails, rather than climb the steep scree. | ||||||
| 11. | A little bit of a mistake here. People seemed to nnot be moving to the right as I could see we needed to, so I made a point of jumping to parallel trails, but at the last critical point, we (Nadim, Dave, and I) wound up going down the trail to the left of the marsh. I was pretty sure that was where we were, but they seemed to get taken by surprise. Phil had said that the marshes were pretty dry, so I led the way as we charged across. Unfortunately, although we came out in a great spot, we misread the map and missed the control to the left. Not really a great route. | ||||||
| 12. | I don't know why Nadim and Dave headed into the woods from the intersection when there was a nice paved road leading almost all the way to the control. And I was amazed at the variety of directions people were coming from as I stood there having a drink. | ||||||
| 13. | Trudge, trudge, Dave leading the way for a while, but Alar and Nadim getting ahead at the end. | ||||||
| 14. | We caught Ethan here on the grind to the top. | ||||||
| 15. | Skip! | ||||||
| 16. | Ethan haded down to #15, while I pursued Alar and Nadim on the trail along the cliffs (my suggestion). We cut off at a point that probably brought us pretty close to #18. | ||||||
| 17. | Surprised to catch Steve Tarry here, and realized that he must have been doing some training of late. | ||||||
| 18. | Right behind Erin, glad that she knew where to cut off the trail, although she didn't spot the flag (I saw it to our left and gave a holler). | ||||||
| 19. | Downhill, so I charged out into the lead and saved a bit by cutting across the trail loop. Others in the vicinity seemed perplexed near the control, but I just followed the stream. | ||||||
| 20. | Just below the green, then up the trail to the sharp bend and into the woods. Steve and Jeff Schapiro were a bit to my left on top of the subtle ridge. I thought I was lower than I was when I got to the saddle, and proceeded as if I were at the one 5 lines below the purple line instead of the one 2 lines above it. nadim got in front of me, Erin and Tracey just behind, and very soon the contours made no sense to me. I told Nadim that I hoped he knew where we were, and Tracey said that she thought we were just about up to the blob of green. We went forward, saw no boulder, and then I spotted the swamp down to our left, and we realized we were too high. We charged down the hill and spread out a little, and we were a bit too far to the left -- Erin found it and called us in. | ||||||
| 21. | I love legs like this, just total flat-out downhill running with abandon. I even had a total crash of a fall on the way down, but just kept going, don't even think I came to a complete stop. | ||||||
| 22. | Tracey called to Erin to wait because she couldn't keep up, but I was the one who was really fading. Nadim got out ahead while I struggled, trying to save a little by staying low near the marsh, but that was hopeless. Totally missed the best route, crossing to the right side of the marsh and coming over the bridge to get the control. | ||||||
| 23. | Meh, I had decided early on that I wanted to take the shorter right-hand option, so I did. I wasn't going to be keeping up with Erin and Tracey anyway, and I can't imagine that I would have caught Glen or JoeMok. Spiked the control, but not going very fast. | ||||||
| 24. | Diagonal through the woods, though it probably didn't save me any time. | ||||||
| F. | Another fine Goat done! |
Total Time Lost - 00:00:00