AOOK technical training - control picking (14.03.2020)

The controls were only marked with tiny strips of off-white paper, so they were very hard to spot.

Very good to #1 and #2 but since I didn't spot any marker underneath the tiny cliff I went on for 20+ meters before deciding that I was in the right spot and turned uphill to #3 which I completely failed to see in the green, this was my second worst mistake today.

Very good to #4, 5 & 6, particularly happy when I spotted the boulder just 15m to the right of my course.

I nearly passed #7 but realized it and turned up to the control detail even though I never saw the marker.

Did the safe route to #8 by making a slight left bend to the knoll before following the ridge to the control.

#9 was OK.

#10 was by far my largest time loss, I had full control halfway there when I read the contour detail while following my compass bearing, but then I failed to spot any knoll and slid past until I could see the path 15-20m in front of me.

OK to #11, 12, 13 & 14. On the last of these I never saw the marker and the contour detail was not obvious but I decided that I had to be in the right spot, which my gps track later corroborated.

OK to #14, 16, 17 & 18 before I took the planned shortcut to #30. I should have gone #17-#31 instead, then I would have had time to do the last loop, which I now realized that I had to skip after #33 since I had already been out for about an hour.

The conditions were quite good, with just a small dusting of snow in a few spots and most of the wet areas had been freeze dried. The main problem was that it was painful to run on the road/path from parking to start and from the finish back to the parking, since the ground was frozen solid so it was like running on concrete.