Race Evaluation
US Champs: Blue
jjcote
| 1. | The leg looked technical and tricky, so I decided to play it ultra-safe by dropping down to the power line, running to the corner, and attacking straight up from there. It cost only two lines of climb, and some distance. Unfortunately, I was unable to read my way up the hill, and made it to the fence without really recognizing any features. Wandered around a bit, and happened across the control. I knew that Mikell was starting 8 minutes after me, and figured I'd probably be seeing him soon. | ||||||
| 2. | Along the hillside, successfully read my way in on boulders and contours, though the map didn't seem that great. | ||||||
| 3. | Down hill, through the field, and a little way along the small trail leading north form the NW corner. Wondered why I was having so much trouble seeing things on the map like this trail, and wondering if it were way out of IOF spec (it is). Over the ridge in about the right spot, a little too far north, and found a bunch of people milling around. Figured I should head south until I saw nasty vegetation, and that worked. Saw Mikell going toward #4. | ||||||
| 4. | Mikell was still looking around when I got to the vicinity, and I took a fall that speared my hand and got blood all over the place. Stumbled around the deadfall, then looked at the cluesheet, and said "30 meters?!", and started walking around looking straight up. Realized that the tree should be more up on the ridge than down in the flats where I was, so I went up and found it, getting ahead of Mikell again. | ||||||
| 5. | Read my way up the hillside and spiked the control, though things on the map didn't seem to be arranged quite the way they were on the ground. | ||||||
| 6. | Almost straight, a bit left of the line. This was a poor choice, I should have gone out to the trail and come in from the north. But I went to the end of the ridge, and navigated well down toward the control. The clue was "thicket", and I guessed that it would probably be something like willows, or whatever that stuff was. Spotted a suitable-looking patch and went to it, but found no control. Bailed down to the trail and came up from the junction to... the same patch of willows. Several people (including Mikell) were coming out of that spot, so I went back. Seems that this vaguely defined blob of green was considered by somebody to include the adjacent evergreen tree, and the control was next to that, down at ground level in the bushes, invisible until I was on top of it. I was not amused. | ||||||
| 7. | Blasted through the yellow, just left of the line, and found the control without trouble. | ||||||
| 8. | Headed in the right direction, went about the right distance, then stopped and wondered what to look for. Headed to my right, saw some yellow that looked like it might correspond to something on the map, and headed to the right spot. It was probably good that there was someone standing there, but I was appalled when I saw the control touching the bottom of what would have been called a sitzmark if it were in snow. "This is a PIT?!", I hollered. I was disgusted. | ||||||
| 9. | Maybe the worst control on the course. Went straight at it, knew where I was when I hit the last trail, climbed up to the right spot... but no boulder. The map was so vague that I couldn't be sure I was in the right place, so I circled around for a while, and saw many other forlorn people on that hillside. Turns out I was correctly identifying the marginal features up there, but eventually went back down to the trail to relocate. Found my attack point, which was the same as before, and this time read my way very carefully up the hill, and wound up in the same place. About to bail and try from some other direction, I saw a small stone buried in bushes, and lamented the fact that it wasn't on the map, or I'd use it to attack from. But then... no... it couldn't be... but I checked next to the rock, and saw a control. Deep in the foliage. Unfortunately, it wasn't in a reentrant, like the map showed. I was outraged. | ||||||
| 10. | A very nice leg. Picked my way through bushes and deadfall, recognized point features, and spiked the control. | ||||||
| 11. | Pretty much straight. When I crossed the trail, John Crowther was nearby, and then I saw Mikell up ahead, looking our way. I said, "Hey Mikell, this SUCKS!", and he laughed in reply, "I have no idea where I am, do you guys?" He said he had been searching all over up there, and we said we thought we were on the line, and that the control should be a bit higher. Mikell said he thought maybe there was a plateau up above, and we went up there and found the filthy old stump that passed for a dot knoll. | ||||||
| 12. | Mikell said he was definitely going down to the trail, around, and attack from the other side, and I said I was going to go straight and attack though the utter nothing. And so I did, with the John off to one side, and Mutsumi Sugizaki, who we caught. The attack actually wasn't so bad: I went down diagonally from the broad spur WNW of the control, and continued until I hit the big reentrant, and very carefully followed it down. The woods in the last part were actually quite nice. I found the miserable little pit because I could see the control from above, but I bet it was invisible from below. There was a guy (Travis Parker, I think) who was below it, and I alerted him to come up to get it. | ||||||
| 13. | Probably should have contoured more level than I did, but I dropped down to the trail a little south of where it crosses the fence. At the fence, I encountered Mikell coming the other way, and he was surprised to see that I had gotten there quicker. Fortunately, the dead trees were pretty close to the buildings, which made it possible to find them. Why these two, among all the dead trees in this place, merited being mapped is beyond me. | ||||||
| 14. | It was halftime at the football game, ane the cheerleaders were drumming up support for the Vikings. As I got near the control, I had Travis nearby, as well as somebody who I think was Michael Prindiville. And I started bellowing, "Evergreen tree? Distinct evergreen tree? There's something distinct about some particular evergreen that distinguishes it from the other thousand evergreen trees in the circle?" There wasn't. Except that one had a control next to it. I rolled my eyes. | ||||||
| 15. | Travis and Michael went straight, and I played it safe by attacking from the trail junction just south of the black circles. Went directly to the right place, and saw no pit or control. Went a little south, looked at the poorly-mapped green, and decided it should be back where I had been, And it was, down on the ground, amid the bushes, in some pathetic excuse for a pit. Travis was just ahead now, and Michael was further ahead. | ||||||
| 16. | Decided to get as close as I could on the trail, then headed in, and there was nothing to go on. I got to where Michael was standing still, and I saw something that I thought could be a dot knoll. Figured maybe it was one of the ones to the east, so I headed uphill and west; so did he. I don't know what "between the westerrn knoll" means, but I couldn't tell whether there were any knolls under that big pile of deadfall anyway. I don't know what possessed me to look down between the logs and find the control. I was scandalized. | ||||||
| 17. | Encountered Charlie DeWeese (Green) on my way out, and said, "Hey Charlie, this SUCKS!". Charlie made a comment about the worst course setting he had ever seen, and how he couldn't find a control from a solid attack point only a short distance away. He later told me that he had given up on the control, until he found somebody who said that the control was inside a bush, so he went back and knocked over a couple of bushes and found it. Anyway, I went directly toward the 5m rootstock. I remember it as being a stump rather than a rootstock, but I could be wrong. And it wasn't 5m, but it was pretty big, more than 2m, anyway. | ||||||
| 18. | Went to the trail and attacked from some vague yellow feature, and found it fine. Michael arrived about the same time. | ||||||
| 19. | Figured I should use #8 and #7 to keep me on track. On the way, I encountered Nancy Koehler, who had just found the pitiful pit at #8, and I said, "Hey Nancy, this SUCKS!". She said she was glad she wasn't the only one who felt that way. Went a little further to the right than I intended, but had no trouble navigating to the right place. Was surprised when I looked at the clues and saw that I was looking for stony ground. I pulled out my handy electron microscope and in fact found a trace of black toner on my map in the middle of the circle. Whatever. I was looking at my watch, and was pretty sure I could pull this off in less than three hours. | ||||||
| 20. | Mikell caught up on top of the hill, and commented that the running was pretty good up there. He said he was planning to to north to the trail, which was also my plan. We went diagonally and hit the trail about 40% of the way there, and Michael was with us. He and Mikell went off ahead faster than I could run at that point, and attacked from a bit further on. I started following the rat trails from the power line, and did it successfully, although the trails did not seem to be mapped correctly. I kept coming to recognizable junctions and thinking "How did I get here?". Wasn't a problem, and though I missed a little to the west, it didn't cost much time. But it was another pathetic pit. | ||||||
| 21. | Went directly to the right spot, saw no control, continued to the next little hill, saw no rocks, and went back. Saw the control down touching the ground on my second pass. I should have known by then. | ||||||
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| F. | Passed Eric Weyman who was powerstrutting up the chute, and he gave me a pat on the back, which was very cool. |
Total Time Lost - 00:00:00