NM Sprint Public Race H50 (25/05/2013)

This weekend combined the Norwegian Sprint Champs and the NOF Mapping Conference, unfortunately there had not been set away a gap on Saturday to attend the public races, and my presentation on the use of raw Lidar point clouds for base map contour, DEM, cliff and vegetation classification was scheduled at exactly the same time as when I should have started.

I did the best I could, which was to run as fast as I could from the conference hotel to the start area, somewhat hindered by the fact that all markings had been removed so I ended up running at least a km extra!

At the start the organizers had packed everthing together, but still not left. They found me a map and I got to start maybe half an hour after the last regular competitor!

My race still started OK, with good split times to the first four controls, but then I made a really bad decision for the fifth leg, probably losing 15-20 seconds by reversing out of the kindergarten and going right around the cemetary, instead of the much short left alternative.

I had used the easy running to #5 to plan the next controls, so they went well up to 12, with my only winning split time coming on the 8th control.

13 was the next long leg and here I messed up badly: I read that one of the stairs was going all the way down, with an index contour "closing off" the bottom end, but didn't see that there was also a black impassable line on top of the contour. This caused a 200+ m detour and 40+ lost seconds.

After the "transport controls" 14 and 15 I ran through the tunnel and was so fascinated by the triple-level underpass towards 17 that I plain forgot about stamping #16: An obvious DSQ. :-(

The final controls were just transport, except that #19 had been removed by the time I got there, so I ended up punching #83, a passing control for the finals which had been set up nearby, but since I was already disqualified this didn't matter, nor did the missing punch at the finish line.

I did at least get to race, which is the most important thing, right? :-)