29 September 2010- Perfect weather and beautiful French scenery guided us to the start of our first day of training. The map made in 1999 was apparently slightly updated. We parked at the ski resort and took a gentle jog to the north of the map were we planned to do a line course. Nico’s carefully planned line proved a challenge as the “white” forest was full of felled trees. The felling practice seems very sporadic with the odd tree here and there cut down and all the rubbish left in the forest. Bare rock was jagged rock scatterings, so not good to run over either. Pits were really big, at least 5 m and wide-no chance of falling in them, although if you did chances are you would never emerge again. After getting a feel for the map on the line course we ran back along 4 controls. Nico and Tania tried some route choice options for the first control. His path option proved best and allowed him some time to wait for me and to be entertained by a falling Scotsman. A real moaner- no blood in sight, but lots of tears and cursing after he stabbed his shin on something.
For our afternoon season we each planned to each take in between 6 and 14 controls on the official pre planned course. Another route choice race for Nico & Tania got us to the first control about the same time. Thereafter we split up to tackle the forest. The forest floor was very busy, lots of humps and bumps which understandable could not be marked. It did mean that you had to really hit the control spot on. A 5-10m deviation meant the control was hidden over another rise. There was a very technical area of 6 controls which proved challenging (see map).
We all encountered swarms of what initially seemed like bees, but apparently were only blue flies. Nico ventured to the controls on the south of the map-bad move. The “white” was not really forest, just not mapped. Or in his word (@#$%^&!!!!!).
We ended the day with a R35 Cappuccino in a coffee shop along the pretty channels in Annecy-Cindy & Nico in the picture here.
No comments:
Post a Comment