Billygoat Disaster
https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Billygoat-2023/Bill...Very fun, but also very frustrating. I was sick last weekend, but this has been a disappointing spring for my orienteering to say the least. Need to review and talk with others.
I felt physically quite good to start off and took my time to decide on how to attack #1. But the problem was I only saw the left fork, not the right fork (which isn't on the Livelox right now).
I had a big pack following me and I knew the final attack could be messy without any strong features to go off. So we all kinda scattered when we hit the circle, but I doubled back and saw it on the cliff and headed off to 2 from there.
The problem was that this time I saw the right fork and started navigating from that to 2. So my direction was actually decent. But for a different leg...
I'm not sure what the solution in training would be for this. Pay attention to the map? Get more into the mindset of racing that isn't racing like a headless chicken? No clear answer for that.
Once I hit 21, I considered skipping 2 to "erase" the mistake. But obviously not having a skip later was going to hurt. So I decided that for the rest of the course I would stay positive and aim to be as clean as possible and see how much time I could make back.
I did that pretty decently, although I still had plenty of mistakes: 6, 13, 14, 15, 20, 22. I took the safest routes I saw on 11 and 12 because I was concerned about getting stuck in impassable mountain laurel, especially after Danny's glowing review of the green east of 11 as a laurel wall. But looking at Livelox, it doesn't seem to have made a difference. Ebone and me continually went back and forth--me taking the trail route around and screwing up the entry and Eric generally going straighter.
15 was a really weird one. I must have run past the flag looking for it next to the boulder. But I didn't see the knoll next to it. So I got on top of the boulder looked in the correct direction according to the map. Then Eric ran through and kept running, but I didn't see anything. Then I just ran in that direction and saw the flag hidden in the laurel. It felt quite far from the boulder, but I would have to go back and check to be certain.
Overall, I was disappointed in my technical performance today. I know the map was technical and many people made mistakes. But I have been working hard on the technical side and was hoping for more. But perhaps I haven't been working enough on the areas where I am weakest.
Congrats Will on confirming again that there's a lot more to this sport than physical speed. And well done NEOC and Jon Campbell for another succesfull Billygoat. I'll be back for more.
At any rate, Niels is right. Time to take a bit of time to recharge and refocus for my main goal this year: NAOC.
I will be spending almost all of June in Telluride, CO, thanks to the Irish Danny. So I am very much looking forward to that.