piutepro's comments - by leg
| 1. | Time Lost: 01:00 | I go straight, the hillside is bland as bland can be. I run straight and cross the trail without noticing it. I get close to the ridge and things seem not to match. I move over to what turns out to be the dark green, realize that it goes downhill. Then I see the garage sized boulder and move over to the control. Should have kept running straight, was probably right on line. |
| 2. | Trashing downhill, across the meadow. It is almost not worth to go out to the road, but I move over anyway. Susan Armstrong stays parallel to road and we get to the control in the same time. | |
| 3. | Uphill, left of the wall to the knoll. Almost an orange control. | |
| 4. | Planned the leg ahead. Down to reentrant, through swamp, turn left around cliff and down to control. Plan works perfectly. | |
| 5. | Time Lost: 01:30 | Along hill, below the cliff, past the big boulder, through reentrant, second big boulder, around to boulder. Well, the control seems nicely tucked away. But no. I go around the boulder. No flag. Oh f---- s----- (fill in curses in English, I am not cursing in Swiss German, this would be unfair to whoever hears it). Susan catches up, looks below. I look up, see the flag up on the spur. Ours?? Hm, weird. Go up, it is the correct code. I punch, go on, drop on the trail after 50 m. Can't be. I go back to double check the code. Maybe is misread it. No, correct. More powerful words in foreign language cross my mind and rise between innocent looking spring trees. |
| 6. | Keep going, shake off the trouble. Cross the stream, the swamp, see the triple boulder combination, cross to control, good. | |
| 7. | Follow the long cliff towards the knoll and the wall down towards the control, then cross before the large reentrant to edge of hill. Probably read too much, but at least I know what I am doing. | |
| 8. | Time Lost: 00:20 | I see hill is kind of vague, so I use the compass, what a rare event. I pass the swamp reentrant combination, drop down the reentrant on the other side of the ridge and come down NE of control, relocate right away. |
| 9. | Take the route above the green and the two reentrants coming up. The trail gives away the control, makes it easy to attack and I see it from far. | |
| 10. | Down through the green to swamp and climbing up and up and up. Per, the Swedish orienteer with whom I chatted before the start (and almost missed it) catches up. We work up the hill. At the road things look weird. There is an unmapped gate, the trail is not there on the other side of the road. Some kind of a mapping bermuda triangle. It doesn't matter, I know I need to go to the hill and cut to the green. | |
| 11. | Downhill race across the meadow again, the swamp is harmless and the control greets friendly from far away. | |
| 12. | A short swamp trashing, up to the trail and drop to the boulder. | |
| 13. | More race racing, a fast trail downhill. This is were the fast guys are really fast, I think. | |
| 14. | Run past the finish. I wish I could keep a speed like Per, who has vanished on the horizon a while ago. | |
| 15. | Uphill to wall, not too bad. | |
| 16. | Time Lost: 00:20 | Straight across reentrant into the barbed wire at the meadow. The sharp sound of ripping nylon alerts me to the mean hidden trap wire. I unstumble and keep going. Same game at the control. Some other wire is nicely decorated with streamers. But not the one which attacked me with the mean streak of a sleeping steel rattle snake. |
| 17. | Leave the barbed snake den behind, stay in the woods and on the line right to control. | |
| 18. | Across the hill through reentrant. Try to maintain some reasonable speed and not to fall into the "old-man-late-in-the-course-slow-sloshing-trot". | |
| 19. | Downhill to the round thing which turns out not to be a water tank but some summer park building. The deep blue lake is a sand pit. I manage these pit falls of the last minute well and simply go to the control. | |
| 20. | I get stuck in the sand for about an hour before I move up to the grassy edge on top. Maybe it was not an hour, it only seemed like it. A better race than yesterday. Today I beat Ernst by a few seconds, better than the seven minutes he took on me in the short race. With Peter running with the big boys, M45 is solidly in Swiss hands. |
Total Time Lost - 00:03:10
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