SOC had a district event at Anderwood today. After helping out at registration I went for a turn round the Brown course. Must have started reasonably well as I was in joint first place at the second control but my legs were really too tired to sustain that pace. The area is pretty runnable (give or take the occasional marsh) so running strength counts. Indeed, if you’re feeling weak then you just end up adding more distance trying to stick to the paths or contour around the hills when you should just peg it in a straight line.
There were a couple of dodgy bits: an extra ditch in the vicinity of number four, and number twelve was on the wrong forest corner. I managed to roll my ankle at control ten and was grateful for the track routes that followed. The results have me in fifth place, nine minutes down on Joe Mercer who stormed round in 48 but only three behind second-placed Colin Dickson. The splits graph confirms that, on the whole, I was just slow. Matthias will be kicking himself that, despite finishing half a minute behind me, he was actually ahead three controls before the end.
Dave,
Number four definitely was dodgy — after all it took me 28 minutes(more than 50% of the winner’s
total time). I also thought that 12 was in the wrong spot or at least the veg boundary was wrong.
And at number 10 there was no feature what-so-ever. I am starting to think that BOF will reject my
application on grounds of complete inability to follow a compass.
cheers,
Neil