HDNC #7 (N9 2/9) (15/01/2015)

Yeah... not great. Major fail into #2, was on course but lost confidence, then found the Men's control, misrelocated (thought I was on the little hill South of where I actually was), nothing fitted (obviously), what then? Dark & green.. no clue.. mini panic.. etc. Relocated eventually & 'nailed it' (at walking pace) 2nd time around. In hindsight should have used that safer entry route 1st time round. Was not feeling amazingly confident after this kjempebom (had lost 1 min getting to #1 already) so pretty slow & careful to #3, got gradually more into it technically from #3 onwards and had at least a few OK splits later on (4, 6, 8). Pretty tough physically. Kind of a sick and extreme course. No rescue map for the last bit! Whaat?! Anyway survived! Really cool training. Thanks to Olex who planned this, Jørn who hung controls and everyone else who organised it logistically. Even though my performance was quite poor the overriding feeling afterwards was just that I'm privileged to get to test myself against stuff like this on a random Thursday evening in mid-January. The important thing is to get out there, try and fail (badly) but keep trying... The thing with night orienteering is you get extremely punished by a few small errors that you could easily correct and get away with by daylight. Also it's much easier to focus at night since you feel like you might die out there if you don't do it right.