Warm up/down 5:00 [1]
shoes: VJ Falcons
To the start - red and white tapes not really visible at night...
Night Orienteering 1:51:37 [3] *** 10.7 km (10:26 / km) +315m 9:06 / km
spiked:16/23c shoes: 2007 Falcons
British Nights at New Beechenhurst. Not the most of inspiring of courses, and after feeling a bit rough over the past few days, I didn't really push it, or want to push it. Seemed to clear a lot out of the system though. Plus I'm still getting the hang of this night-O lark, and an intermittent connection in my headlamp meant only had one bulb operational (the 10W I think). The course, however, was set up so that you could run fast in places with little or no need for navigation, not really making the most of the area - certainly preferred my JK course earlier in the year.
Started off in day mode, straight to #1 and turned wrong way on ride on spur - 90 secs. Then didn't pay enough attention to #2, again turned wrong way along stream, 2.5 mins gone this time. #5 was poor distance judgement, went up far too early, then decided to contour along the slope and was lucky to see control when turned round - not sure that was the most obvious ditch/re-entrant on that slope but that's what was mapped... V. slow to the bingo hide control (#7), slow and high to #10 but knew what was going on. Slightly confused by unmapped re-entrant almost next to similar mapped feature with control at #13, unmapped patch of crap veg along earthbank to #14, slightly early up to #17, happy to hit #18 well but poor choice of route. Crap route to #21, poor compass and dragged along slope and a bit by vegetation, would've been faster to run up to and back in from path.
Could have been more aggressive in places, deliberately running to paths and along to a good safe attack point. Should have started off a little more cautiously, mistakes to 1 and 2 were schoolboy. Aiming off improved throughout the course, still need to work on distance judgement at night. Pleased to go under 2 hours but just over the magical 10 min/k mark. Certainly still a lot to learn about Night-O.