Harry Lagerts Nattcup 1 (2016-09-14)

With 200 starters on two very similar courses there's usually a lot of people around on Harry Lagert, but when I arrived early at the start Sören J told me to start at once so I was completely alone on this race:

1: Good start

2: I should probably have taken the left route via the path I just touched at the end, even with no real mistakes I lost a minute here.

3: Really scary control! When I passed the creek halfway I realized that I was left of the line, so I ran a bit horizontally following some faint traces of the unmapped continuation of the indistinct path shown to the left. The last part up the hillside I was pretty much walking all the time, scanning to all sides to make sure I would spot the control. I was very glad when it turned up directly in front of me since it would have been pretty much impossible to recover anywhere near the control. It is possible that I could have gone left instead, taking the path uphill to the path junction, two dot knolls and a reentrant: From there I would have contoured straight into the control, avoiding all the hesitation.

4: Having found #3 and done all the climbing I mentally relaxed, now I just needed to run almost flat, cross the path and the creek, then turn into the big valley with the control cliff. Unforunately I ended up running a little bit uphill (no compass bearing here), so when I hit the path I looked at the nearby bends and decided that I had to be just a couple of mm north of the line so I continued and passed the creek just as expected, with a knoll to my right. I then followed a bearing but had to stop when I hit the path. Recovering I thought I was taking the green valley towards the control but I was of course still too far west on the much more distinct feature so I needed another correction after getting down to where I had planned to go originally. I lost about 2:30 here.

5: Very good: I failed to spot either path junction but when the path turned a bit right and downhill I knew where I was so I just aimed a bit more left than planned and hit it perfectly.

6: Another control which I made too complicated: Running first and alone I should have gone downhill past the cabins, take the path 100 m past the second group of cabins and then turn right, crossing the creek in a much better spot. From there I could have followed the paths past #1 and end up the same way into the control. I believe this would have been at least a minute faster.

7: OK

8: Perfect except that after jumping down the long left cliff, the control cliff was not to be seen, there might be some relative position problems here? I lost 20 sec. (EDIT: I have looked at the tracks posted by many other competitors, most of them had a little trouble here.)

9: Should have gone a bit more straight, avoiding the green marsh which was _very_ wet, otherwise OK.

10: OK