Compass training + OCC test run (28-04-2015)

My father-in-law was was born exactly 80 years ago, so we had a party to celebrate him this evening.
Due to this I could not run Oslo City Cup as planned but instead I was allowed to make a test run during the day.

Before I was due to meet the kind Heming orienteer who brought my map to the start area I had some spare time, so I decided to try one of the old training exercises Kart-Bosse have written about, i.e. trying to run as straight as possible through difficult terrain.

I started with 250 double steps due north, the GPS track shows that I managed to hold the course pretty well even though I was partly running through dense bush, while climbing up the hillside: It looks like I drifted about 30 m east due to the sidehill running.

The next stage was due west, the same length as the first, but through much nicer vegetation, and here my direction holding was very good.

The third part was south, with more dense bush. Here I fell off a little bit in the downhill (east) direction, just like the first length, but then I had to cut off early since I was hitting a housing area.

The final eastwards leg was OK until the end where a steep hillside again caused me to swing a little downhill.

At this point I ran back to the starting area, got my map and tried to run as if this was an actual competition, while knowing I probably had too little time to finish the course before I had to drive home and prepare for the dinner party:

1) Good start but lost my confidence shortly before the control when I saw another flag to the NE. Ran up to it, realized that the control code was wrong and had to turn back.

2) Pretty easy.

3-5) OK

6) Only reasonable route choice.

7) Bad direction leaving #6, then I never managed to correct and ended up with a big mistake.

8) OK

9) I never got the path system to make sense, so I just ran using the contours here.

At this point I was literally running out of time so I abandoned the last controls.