Owls Count

I had a couple of objectives for this event. The first was to finish in front of my father and the second was the qualify for the C final. I achieved the former (though by only one second in the heat), but failed on the latter.

In between the heats and finals I took some photos of the starters for the A finals. These photos are available here.

Qualifier - Heat A
A very mixed run this. I simply should have been one to two minutes quicker. Several of the controls I made poor route choices for:
at 2 I ended up stuck in a thicket and lost over 20 seconds;
at 10 I started by running back up and then realised I should have been dropping down to go under the road.

For the later part of the course my speed dropped off and while the navigation was better I was not covering the ground well enough. In the end I missing the C final by twenty five seconds, but did finish a whole second in front of my father.

Final - D
In the final I had a much cleaner run. The first control, straight up the hill, was good, but I should have been concentrating on planning routes for the rest of the course. By not doing this I dropped a few seconds at 2 and 3 struggling to read the map.

I decided that I was not going over the hill and instead went round the bottom - probably losing a few seconds by doing this, but leaving myself fresher for the final part of the course. Caught up my three minute man in the first half of the course - particularly pleasing as it was my father and meant my aim of beating him just fell to staying close to or in front of him.

All in all it was a very enjoyable event. The spectator area for the finals gave great views of people running around below you. Weather was not great, but you cannot have everything!