Race Evaluation
Colorado 5-day Day 1: Blue
Tundra/Desert
| 1. | Will have the course here. Soon. I promise. | ||||||
| 2. | I sort of got a warming from this leg that there was quite a bit more rock out there than mapped. | ||||||
| 3. | I also got a feeling that reentrant features were drafted in somewhat exaggerated proportions. | ||||||
| 4. | Went along the map boundary, aroud the big hill to its right, and nailed the control on the swoop down. Found MihaiV there—made up 4 minutes on him! | ||||||
| 5. |
Did not check features en route Bad compass work +01:45 | Mihai went down the slippery overgrown rock face like a madman. I carefully followed the tracks made by various parts of his body, but as I got up the next spur I could see him no more. I was headed way off in my direction, and my distance judgment was not great. So, I crossed the next reentrant and almost made it to the large field. Relocated on the brown dot knoll (notice terminology—as opposed to black dot knolls, brown dot boulders, and other cross-feature hybrids to be encountered further on the course) 305 m to the WSW. | |||||
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| 8. | Leaving #7, saw the mindsweeper sweeping in. | ||||||
| 9. | Still ahead of Mikkel. | ||||||
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| 11. | He passed me shortly after #10. I followed him, then took a slighly lower route, going basically along the purple line. As I was going up the hill, I felt nasty cramps/pain in my chest, apparently following an instance of arrhythmia. Guess I should not have had that second coffee while talking to PG in the morning. | ||||||
| 12. | I went higher than necessary, trying to relax my body so that the chest pain would go away and reading the map. The map seemed excellent. | ||||||
| 13. |
Read map too late +00:15 | Passed old man Dominie just before #12. Walked/ran this leg, reading the map, and got there but did not think the reentrant I saw was as prominent as the one mapped. Walked just a bit past but there was no other reentrant, so went back and sure, the bag was there. "Catch me if you can", I tell Dominie. He yelled something back about the wrong control. No duh—different course! | |||||
| 14. |
No attack point Bad map reading +01:35 | The cramps mostly disappeared, but still I was running quite slowly and reading the map. I headed towards the large cliffy hill SE of the control. Once I got close, could not figure out the mapping of rock features on top of the ridge. So, just attacked blindly, and found some cliffs (just NW of the control). Stood there with some other people trying to identify those cliffs. Another person did the identify faster that I did, so I followed him and there was the bag. | |||||
| 15. |
Did not like map Bad map reading +02:30 | Went right there, knowing exactly where I was. Once I got on the right spur, through the patch of woods with brown-dot rock piles, I could not see the feature. Instead, inside a patch of deciduous trees, there were two GIANT ROCKS. Colossal boulders. There weren't any on my map. So, I thought I was one spur over and looking at the irregular triangles (why? irregular triangles would be low rocks...) So, ran back one spur, towards a bag (#522) that I had seen. But, the guy who found #14 for me (Svobodny?) alerted me that the bad there was #522. I turned around and wet again towards the GIANT BOULDERS. But this time, off to my left, there was... a bag. Comment: Now I understand, looking at the map legend. See my comment—one of the giant boulders was indeed mapped with the small black dot, and the other one was a brown knoll entirely covered by the purple circle. | |||||
| 16. |
Bad route choice Did not plan ahead Did not like map Confused parallel features +00:45 | Went wide riight; too excited. This probably cost me—guessing—30 seconds. Climbed following going around a U-shaped cliff on its right. Navigated off the clifs on the other (E) side of the canyon to my right. Then, saw the two grey bare rock areas, and the knoll—the control feature—but next to it and below it there were more rocky things. Was just about to go back down and check them out, but saw the bag. This was another 10 to 15 seconds, as says the HRM. | |||||
| 17. | Sadly, I did not have any problems here. Was headed a bit off to the right but saw the bag almost as soon as I got into the open. I didn't deserve this... karma payment plan, see Control 19. | ||||||
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| 19. |
Did not like map Could not relocate +08:35 | Well. Went exactly through #16. Got down and climbed along the straight chain of rocks just S of the purple line. Got to the end of the chain, then attacked by taking a bearing. Thought I had climbed enough. Nothing—some rocks, figured they weren't mapped. Got to the reentrant past it; too far. Went back to the end of the chain of cliffs, surveying lower points in the process (found more unmapped rocks). Attacked again from that end of cliffs, now going more aggressively up. Got to the boulder just below the control; was convinced that that was high enough as the map said I should only climb 3+ contours from my attackpoint. No bag. Went down to the reentrant past the control, the exact same point at which I aborted my first approach. Vadim came along and started searching, too. Stood for about 40 seconds there, matching the spurs I could see to the SE to the map and making sure I was on the right spur. On my third approach, I went all the way down to the clearing. From around there, could see people searching in the chain-of-cliffs. Since I had already surveyed most of the area, the only untouched place was straight up. | |||||
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| F. |
Total Time Lost - 00:15:25