okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Saturday, March 10, 2007
A boom from a loooong time ago
I was looking at some old maps today and I came across one of my all-time most annoying booms. I missed the second control when I ran a "direct" course at a race organized by OK Denseln back in August 1988.
As you can see, I made a parallel error and missed 2. I headed way too far down the hill before I recognized what I'd done, turned around and took the control. It must have cost a good 30+ seconds.
It wasn't a huge boom. I've certainly made much bigger mistakes. But it was a memorable mistake. Not that I didn't make other mistakes on the course. Take a look at the map and see, for example, my mistakes at 3 and 9.
But that mistake a 2 still sticks in my mind for two reasons. First, it was a really stupid mistake. I just wasn't paying attention. I was hoping to find the control, not trying to find it. Second, it dropped me into 2nd place on the "direct" course. Not that I really care about my result on the direct course at a little meet...except, that without that little mistake I'd have finished ahead of Micke Wehlin. And that would have been cool (even if Wehlin must have just jogged around the course).
