Sierra 3-day at Truckee: Long distance H50 (10.09.2011)

First of all, a big Thank You to BAOC for setting up 3 great races 3-5 hours away from where most of the organizers live: This is a lot of work and I am impressed!

The last day was a very long and tough race, at 2000 m altitude and mostly very soft, sandy ground covered with pine needles:

OK to 1 and 2, mostly following the contours.

To #3 the best choice was obviously to go almost straight over the top of the hill, following the open areas, but I was so tired that I decided to bail by taking the path to save some altitude and to attack the control from the road, which made it much safer.

#4 was OK all the way until the very end where I couldn't see the distinct yellow open area leading down to the control, and since the control ring covered the rocks above I didn't see them on my map. The extra loop took about 1:30.

#5 was horrible: I attempted the safe alternative by going through the saddle at the top, found the boulders which I believed to be the big ones, but which turned out to be the smaller pair to the right. From that point there was an obvious opening in the forest which I assumed was the yellow ride, so when it made a sharp left turn below; i used that as a secure attack point and used compass plus stride counting, without finding anything except lots of boulders without control flags.

I then went back up, and tried again from the same (wrong) spot, before I finally found the control by "trial & error".

Total time loss here was just about 5 min!

I then ran too fast towards and past nr 6, and when I turned around I started reading the map around control 7 instead! I lost another 3:30 here before I realized that I had to go back to my initial plan of safe orienteering.

OK to nr 7, on nr 8 I decided that the safest alternative was to attack from the two boulders on top of the hill.

Towards 9 I didn't manage to follow my compass course, the extra loop here took 1:20.

At this point in the race Tapio was leading, but when I ran more or less straight towards 10 while he took the path down left I regained the lead.

OK to 11 and 12.

For nr 13 the plan was to find the yellow rides leading straight downhill, but I started out in the wrong direction, then hit the saddle, from which point I didn't dare to go far enough downhill, so I made another mistake into the control. 2 min time loss.

I then ran very fast along the contour to nr 14, then started out flat and slightly uphill to get onto the spur towards the final control.

My final time was 74:07 min on 7225 m, 10:15 min/km. (Pulse: 152)

This was just fast enough to win the course.
Total time loss was over 13 min which shows that I really don't know yet how to orienteer on these terrains. :-(