Southern Championship Long in Lydney Park, Forest of Dean
Rank: 6/19, +19'07"
I knew that this was going to be a long and though competition since I have not been doing any long sessions for a very long time. I figured it was best and just try to approach this in normal pace and just take things as the come.
I started going really wobbly to first and ended up to far right and lost 45". I was a bit to far up on 2nd but OK. 3rd would have been 20" faster going through the green but I was a little bit afraid of the green in the beginning of the course since I didn't have a feel yet for the mappers vegetation standard.
The long leg to 4th had me clueless... I dared not attack the control straight on since I was unsure of the vegetation and running speed in the standing green and also was a bit uncertain about how tricky the control would be from that direction so I chickened out and went with a route choice on paths to the left. Could have micro-optimized the route and bit and saved some 20", but otherwise it just seemed really easy and fast going straight to the control. So lost 2'.
After that solid orienteering until 15 with only minor mistakes on 9, 10 and 12. 15 was a real mess and I guess that I was starting to get tired at this point. Misread the path junction and ended up looking at the railroad and after that overshoot the control and had to turn back so almost 2' where lost here.
OK on the next controls until I ended up running zig-zag on the long leg to the 21st control. My initial plan was to go right the same way I came up to control 4 but ended up going in the wrong direction from the control and got stuck on the wrong side of a green area. I tried to come up with a new plan and decided to go straight over the big hill instead. But I managed to run way to far on the path on the top of the hill and ended up close to the lake and probably ran one of the longest possible routes to the 21st control. Lost 4' on Crane here and almost 3' to Ptr and Erik.
After this leg I was really feeling very tired and had to walk up the hills and also started doing crazy navigational decisions. Small mistake on 24, +30", and 26, +30". But really made a mess on 27 and 28. 28 Was also placed in a really strange place and I could not quite get the gps-route to match the position on the map. The control might have been placed in a hole some 40-50 m west of the mapped hole.
Eventually got to the finish....
I had a good 3' lead on Ptr after half the course but could not hold him off in the end.
Results:
http://www.ngocweb.com/schamps2010/splitsd2.pdf
Map with route