Orienteering race 59:26 [4] 3.4 km (17:29 / km)
shoes: Inov-8 X-Talon 2nd pair
Day 4 of S6D. After watching the tv coverage of the WOC Relay I was looking forward to this, but after taking an hour to travel 3km from the main road to the car park I was inevitably going to be late for the start again. Had not heard announcements about a punching start, so just hoping, but it was ok when I got there. Think I was still stressed though.
Once again hadn't a clue where I was at the start triangle, compass was showing 40-50 degrees off where the features on the ground seemed to indicate, but thought I should trust the compass. Went slowly, and realised I was a bit left and had to cross a green stripe area to correct. Coming out of 1 I briefly thought about a long path/road route - now wish I hadn't rejected it. Followed a bearing which was obviously wrong as I came to a field and realised I had reached the oob area due South of 1, when I should have been 500m West by then. Spiked the control from there, but lost 3 mins. Got fastest split to 3, then set off to 4. Crossed a road and matched up contours for a while, but then nothing matched. Wandered and stopped several times before eventually finding a ridge between two tracks and realising I had once again 'thought ahead' - there were two roads that needed to be crossed, not one! So I was 500m North of the control with a large hill to cross, then some tricky marsh/thicket/knoll nav to the control. By this time I'd lost 8 mins, then dropped another 2 when I missed the control and went past 100m.
4-5 was another disaster, a short leg across what looked like good detail but turned out to be vague and really needed a safe strategy. Wandered around in a combination of thick forest interspersed with green strip open rubbish until I stumbled on a track 200m from the control - 9 mins more down the gurgler. 6 was ok, basically a wide track run, for 7 I should have used the same strategy even though it looked a lot longer - straight was another 3 mins lost due to having to hunt around in green even though I checked all the features off carefully for the whole leg, I still ended up 100m right and though I was left of the control.
8 was just reasonable though I faffed around for a few seconds because a boulder just before the control was not visible from above. 9 was another catastrophe - looked short (150m) and simple but couldn't match the contours and went way, way past before relocating - 4 mins blown. Got fastest split to 10, and 2nd fastest to 12. Very disappointed, clearly 30 mins lost to some basic errors, lack of concentration and bad bearings. Winner was 32, so definitely a lost opportunity. I know I can beat all these guys on the right day, two more chances to show it.