Orienteering 1:10:00 [3]
shoes: XTalon212-1
QOC Combat Village - Red (to avoid 1:15000).
Somehow really enjoyed this, first race as M55. Early start, saw no-one and made all the footprints in the snow :-)
I read beforehand that vegetation mapping may be out of date so had decided to run straight until I had a feel for what was what. That feeling never came.
The ground shapes and general layout of the map were great but I never worked out any sort of strategy for finding runnability. Variously spurs, re-entrants, stream valleys were both fast and slow.
Good tough, well planned course although could have thrown in some pace changes. Generally thought I had decent plans and pictures and found controls smoothly, but Lost lots of time on:
#2 - dragged right initially by fallen timber
#3 - lots more unmapped veg, and hesitated short of control when I knew the pictures said I was still short
#4 conservative banana route into control
#6 really choked in some windblow, confused by some unmapped buildings began going up wrong re-entrant to the right - lost confidence - had been on line - corrected OK.
#7 - sense of humour failure in more windblow - not sure what the best route was here
#8 - memorable to pick my way across a fairly fresh beaver dam
#9 lost loads of time in some green1 which turned out to be inpenetrable.
Ho Hum. I'm just not finding fast ways through these sorts of forest. Dobbs would have helped slightly as would a more aggressive attitude. Think I need to find some target races to provide a bit of focus. Absent tha, I'll be doing a lot of cycling here !