Veritas Natt (03/11/2021)

https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Veritas-Frognerseteren-nattlop/Mellom?classId=430575

This week's night race required extra effort from both the organizers and runners, but the hike into Nordmarka from Frognerseteren was well worth it: The entire course was in "fairy tale forest", i.e. old growth spruce with bright green moss and low heather ground cover.

I used my headlamp to get to the event, but in order to save battery I put it in maximum power save mode, which made it comparable to a 1970'ies incandecent bulb. My big mistake was to forget this before starting, so I ran the full course with very low visibility, but that made the great forest even more amazing when it turned up underneath me as I ran. :-)

Very good to #1, hit it perfectly and spotted the reflex marker from about 10m away.

I had some issues determining exactly where to leave the path to get to #2, got into the dense green before hitting the marker right in front of me.

Leaving #2 I made the first mistake, I didn't see how far the dense green was covering the ground and ended up going directly through it, losing almost a minute, then another time loss at the end because I missed my exit point and ran a bit too far north.

#4 might have been my best control, then I made a small (10-15m) wobble into #5, followed by a very good route and execution to #6, except for losing my direction into the flag. With a normal lamp I would probably have spotted the control but now I lost 15-20 seconds inside the circle.

I lost another 15-20 s by leaving #6 to the north, then I had to correct this and cut across.

#8 was another minute lost to the lamp: I passed right above the control (Livelox thinks I even punched it!) without seeing the marker, so I had to return when I hit the path.

#9 was good, even with low visibility it was easy to follow a bearing almost due south to the end of the marsh and then keep to the left of the green cluster.

OK to #10 and then marsh+path to #11.

#12 was a case of bad mapping: There is no knoll in the center of the circle, but when the reflex marker hang on a tree on a small tuft a bit further north that didn't really matter: Even with my minimal light it was visible from at least 30m away.

All in all a very enjoyable run in a magical forest. :-)