On the medium course, Graham again had a good result coming in 5th (maintaining his 2nd place in the league) and there were just seconds between Ray and Rosie in 14th and 15th. Tony, Martin, Roger (@craddocktaunton) and Sue also all finished, with Martin maintaining his 9th place in the league.
We were welcomed to Wells by a torrential rain storm so stayed firmly sat in Andy’s car until it seemed to ease. Eventually I wandered into the school and was able to go through a warm up stretch by the registration and watch the bedraggled runners punch the finish. They were giving good feedback about the courses so I was motivated to get going. At the Start we were unusually allowed to pick up our maps before punching which was just as well as they were stuck together. I took off heading towards some school buildings where there was a cluster of controls on my map but in my haste I didn’t invest the time to focus and fix on control #1. I sped past #1 straight to #24 as I mistook the vertical line of the 4 in the open to read as 1 As the code didn’t match I thought I stuffed it navigationally so popped to #2 and relocated, then to cap it all sped past #1 again to #25, then eventually fixed on the broken circle for #1… doh wasn’t the first word that popped into my head. Losing 1’45" on a 45" control feels like some sort of record but anyway it did mean I would be quicker for those controls looking on the positive side! After six controls around the school trying to avoid OOB car parks I was glad to be out on the streets which offered plenty of legs with interesting route choices before returning to the school. I had trouble finding control #26 tucked under a tree on a fence corner, reading the description would have helped but they were too long for my holder and I didn’t want to ‘waste’ time unfolding the map. To sum up, I felt quite fit and had mostly a solid run but need to be a bit more mindful not to wing it in tricky areas.
