JK 2012 – Day 3 (Craig a Barns) Review

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
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