Click here for my Boulder Dash '05, M21 Day 1 map.

Click here for my Boulder Dash '05, M21 Day 2 map.

I ran poorly both days. On top of a banged-up body, distracted mind, and equipment problems, I missed 3 bags when within 1 meter. That was frustrating, especially when I had to pay large relocate/ reattack penalties. I don't think the bags were hidden really -- they were certainly visible when attacked from a particular direction. For the most part, I think the courses and the course setting were good, in excellent, interesting, and fun terrain. I just didn't have it. I'm not sure that the map was perfect, but I have no evidence to suggest that it was not. I personally was not in sync with either the contours or the veg, yet Stirling and Dominie have excellent resumes, so I'm sure it was me. I think the core of my failure can be summarized with difficulty in reading the contour picture in really crappy viz terrain. Not something I have a lot of practice with.

Day 2 actually wasn't such a bad run, with the exception of about a 20 minute loss on #14 (bag #912). My booms are generally limited at about 2-4 minutes absolute worst case, unless I do something horrendously stupid, like a 180 or run off the map, and I basically went to the center of the circle on this one, so to lose that sort of number on that sort of leg at the level of skill I'm personally at would merit going back into the forest to have a look at it, but unfortunately I did not have the time to stick around. I attacked the thing at least 4 times from strong, known, close points. Thoughts at the time were "two lines too low", and "on unmapped feature NE of center of circle", and "not correct relative to larger veg and contour picture". I have absolutely no evidence to back up any of these speculations except the half dozen runners treasure hunting too high on my 4th re-attack. Without evidence or corroboration, I'll blame myself 100%, but it was certainly bizarre and frustrating.

I should take a month off. Let my body heal, and let my mind work out the distractions from the major upheavals in my space. But I average over a race a week, and never miss trainings, so I don't think it is going to happen. I wonder if people ever just take a month off -- no races, no training (which is the key question), and I wonder if this is a good thing to do?