Orienteering race (BOC Long) 1:54:50 [5] 20.05 km (5:44 / km) +366m 5:15 / km
shoes: Adidas - Swoop 2 #2
M21E 16.2k
To kick things off i arrived at the start and it was a minute after my call up time. So i walked in to the box while pinning my number on to find Grassie in the same box (he was starting 3 minutes after me). Finally got my number on and my cd's in the holder and just had time to have a glance at the map before going into the final box. Not the best preparation.
1&2 - fine
3 - missed to the right because i hadn't planned coming out of 2. 30s
4,5&6 - fine
7 - left the control thinking i needed to contour instead of going downhill and hit a track which i thought was the one past the control so made my way back round the hill but hit another track and couldn't work out where i was then i found #6 again and Grassie had caught me up. 2nd time lucky maybe. Used my compass this time and dropped right into the right re-entrant but spent a few seconds trying to find the control. 2:30
8,9&10 - all ok and i was pulling away from Grassie
11 - it was an over or round choice and i chose round (idiot). Looking again now i would choose over every time. Probably no more than 20s lost though.
12 - decided i needed to choose either to go left or right around the stream and never considered going straight which would definitely be quicker then i ran past the control thinking i was looking for a different number but realised it must have been the right one. 40s
13&14 - fine
15 - the map was a bit shit but i didn't really lose much time. 10s
16 - undershot
17 - put my hand down at the top of a bank and when i ran down my compass stayed at the top so i had to run back up to get it. 10s
18 - fine
19 - bad route choice and hesitated when i saw loads of trees which was marked as open but ignored the trees and hit the control ok
20 - again there were loads of unmarked trees and it's not like they were young and had been missed in a map update, the mapper had obviously just decided he didn't like these trees so he wasn't going to map them.
21 - ok
22 - bad route
23 - ok
24,25&26 bad routes and about half way to 24 was when i was really starting to feel tired
27,28,29,30,finish - ok
Probably only lost 5 minutes at most counting bad route choices and errors so that's 25 minutes lost due to fitness. Looks like i'll have to try 5 times as hard on improving my fitness than i will on nav.