Harvster Relay (2017-06-25)

1) Good, took a nice line along the paths, through the col, then down the natural line of hills and marshes. Green patch 100m before gave me confidence, high bracken took some of that away.
2) OK, forced myself to keep height and good direction. Had to check a few features first as everything had a crag on it.
3) OK, slightly poor exit, but got back on line, did a bit of ground-to-map with the patches of trees and rocky ground.
4) Good, simple leg, got to the wall early and ran along. Minging bracken the whole way
5) Good, checked compass out of gate, on first spur, then contoured along into the control nicely
6) Poor, bad exit, distracted by another runner, then by herd of cows. Tried to scan for control when on half-way spur, but without reflectors I didn't see anything. Although, was probably already too far left at this point. Ran to the rock with a dip before it, but was way left, small panic, then sort of worked it out and ran along. Annoying.
7) Bad, great route, out to wall then along to junction, forced myself to go right to the junction as it was night. Checked compass, went slowly from AP, but went wrong side of first bush and never got back on-line and that was that. Quite a bit of pointless bashing about and half-arsed relocation, which was obviously impossible in there at night, eventually bit the bullet and went back to wall, but didn't know which side of the junction I was, so had to relocate my AP. Then went back in, what felt like the same way, and found the control straight away. Very annoying as I had had a good start.
8) OK, foudn it hard to keep a line down the hill, tussocky marshy cow-trodden shite. Was a bit off line, no biggie.
9) OK, tough exit from 8, was just off line, but meant I didn't get in the reentrant, so when I popped out the other side of the trees and there was no wall I was confused, worked it out and was then fine.
10) OK, knew this would be nails. Had someone in front of me. Came under the rocky crag pretty spot on, got onto a track that I thought was going to far down, but went with it for some reason. Saw all the green, still went with it. Then saw the lower platform and after 3 big signals I corrected and went back up. Not great, but potential disaster averted.
11) Good, minging back up the hill, basically on the line, back through the cows, this time there was a mother with calf, so gave them a bit of distance. Ended up a bit right of where I wanted, hit the wall and knew I wasn't going through the forest, so cut left and went to the gate, then stayed left again until the clearing. Went on compass and nailed it.
12) Good, obviously this was nails, go took a proper bearing, and went steady. Re-took bearing once I hit knoll after 75m. Hit spur about 5m left of spur. Pleased with that.
13) OK, got a good line and knew where I was the whole time, past the old fence, but as I started to go round the distinct veg boundary it all went weird. Confused and wanting to be safe, I went back onto the main clearing and then along to the end to check, no control, so I was on the first one, so cut through to the 2nd one. I think in day I would have been fine, but at night a few trees looked like all the clearing had ended so bottled it.
14) Good, nice line to fence junction, then swung right of the main reentrant.
15) Good, dropped as fast as I could, then along path
16) Good, came in a bit early as I interpreted the boulder field as the crag, looked back and saw wall junction as back-up
17) Good, nice easy line round path and marsh
18) Good, although it turns out I wasn't quite where I thought I was, but I was aiming off so it worked out fine anyway, which is the point of aiming off. Attacked of path bend and into the head-high bracken in the open, dropped right down onto control with NOC coming in from the side.
19) Poor/Good, had a panic that I hadn't checked code for 18, so climbed some meters back up, letting NOC get away. But I wasn't going to risk it. Left on compass, didn't see anything I expected, kept going on compass, still didn't see anything I expected. But things seems on line. Realised I was either going to hit the big marsh or path, so kept going on compass. Got into the open area, thought it was marshy so turned right (running up the small path but not really knowing it), Hit main path, saw open area, turned right, ran for a bit but didn't see any junction. Stopped, looked at map, looked up, saw control. So, on paper it was good, I ran very straight and sort of kept moving alright (for the terrain), but for a large portion of the leg I didn't really know where I was, but my compass was solid so I was fine. Trust the compass!
20) Poor, wanted to contour, but it was minging, so dropped a bit, cut the curner, up to the pointy crag, but didn't attack the slope enough and got pushed left. Should have used compass more and HTFU.
21) Good, saw the path option, but the leg looked simple, so went straight. Solid compass, avoided some trash so ended up a bit left, but nice big rocky hill to push my back in.
22) OK, I don't like blaming maps, but the path seemed like BS to me. I ran down the path, it then left the fence, turned left, I cut off even more left than this, and then ended up on the knoll to the east. WTF? Either a time-warp, new/old path
23) OK, thought this would be quite tricky being diagonal, but also had massive collecting feature. Ended up in first reentrant and parallel errored it, but go collected by the wall and then in, no big deal
24) Good, pretty easy, started to feel tired though, especially tough terrain at this point
25) Good, managed to not get distracted by the big unmapped crag before the control
26) Good, could see the shapes from far enough away, and the lights from finish for proxy.