Another new area to me, and one with a reputation. My routegadget trace is here (Course 13 Richard Lecky-Thompson + GPS).
I expected to feel very tired after the first two days, but started to feel quite good on the run to the start. I will try to explain the physiology behind that in a separate post.
There is a lot of light green at Craig a Barns. Navigating in this was a challenge. It made the contour features hard to see in the forest, making it hard to use my normal style of relying on them for navigation. When I used my compass carefully, I seemed to do OK, and made mistakes when Ididn’t use it, e.g. 10-11, where I left the wall corner about 20 degrees too far to the right and went down the wrong spur.
I had a number of good legs where I felt like I was able to get running – unlike the previous day. 3 through to 7 especially. However, I completely misinterpreted the map coming out of 7 and then failed to execute the first section of my route going far to far North, around the block of fight – I think I was towed off course by a W21E!
The route I missed from 7 was to the South, under the steep slopes. I read that line as being in a deep valley, and expected it to be hard to get through. In fact it is a steep slope down to a flat area. I think I was mislead by the line of green running along the bottom of the slope – as if this was a thick area by a river.
The other area I had trouble with was 15 to 16. My plan was to drop down the hill until I met the path. Unfortunately, there was a rough open area with a path half way down. The path lead in to the Green and stopped. If you look at the GPS trace, then you can see that I appear to have run into the green by quite a long way. On the ground, the green was much more sparse there! After failing to find my control I eventually worked out the problem and dropped all the way down and found the control easily.
What did I learn?
- Use my compass carefully more often
- Find some way of identifying when I have dropped far enough down a slope
- Using the GPS trace on animation mode in routegadget is a really good way of telling where I was actually running well and where I was hesitating