JWOC 2015 Middle Quali/Final

The Middle distance qualifier had portions of orienteering that were probably the smoothest that I had ever run. Unfortunately my start and speed capped off my rate of success. The first control was my one and only mistake, I saw the leg and tried making a plan, but it was a fairly vague control and so my plan also ended up being vague. Thus instead of passing the rocky ground and continuing on to the control, I was just south of my intended path and ended up in the center of the forest with no features off of which I could navigate. I though that I saw a tip of a marsh down south and hoped that I could use it to relocate. I went quite a ways before I ran into the large marsh where I relocated and was able to hit the control. The guy behind me caught up and so I knew that I had lost over 2 minutes on that control.

 

From there The rest of the course went very smoothly. Every leg was easy to make a plan for and I was able to  execute those plans more or less perfectly. At one point a Dane caught up to me and so I tried keeping up with him for a while. I managed about two controls before I continued back on my own, it was very difficult to navigate and run at the speed that he was putting up. I had to slow down in order to know where I was. After the race, I placed 33 in my heat; 4 min behind from qualifying into the A-Final. 2 of those minutes could be attributed to my one mistake, but the rest is a result of my navigational/running speed.

Though I was slow, I still managed to qualify for the B-final which was a huge improvement from last year. From there I prepared for the final by looking back on my quali, and seeing what I could possibly make better, I therefore focused on going slow to my first control. Unfortunately, my first control was very easy and so I did it perfectly and wasted no time in slowing down. By four I had caught up to the two starters ahead of me, but managed to look and start planning 6-7 as I was running 5-6. I realized this after about 10 seconds of running but by then it was relatively too late, I had lost contact and now I needed to relocate. Being a bit further East of the control then I had anticipated lead me to take a solid 3 min to find the control. After this mistake cause by lack of focus, I engaged in what one may call "Beast mode" and I began running very aggressively for the rest of the course., both physically and navigationally.

This saved me a bunch of time overall, but sadly it led me to take one of the last controls too directly and lose about a minute. I overshot 15, found 16 and came back to my control from there. I passed a Dane who was running slower then me about 3 times. First when I caught to him (he started 2 min ahead of me) then subsequently after I made both of my mistakes.