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Monday 24 September 2007

Leg 3: Akld Middle

Ok so you can't win an o race in the first three controls...but you can sure lose it and plenty of the field was out of the reckoning after leg 3 of the akld middle. In my little excerpt the purple line swerving off to the left represents the common mistake made by people without decent plans. They were trying to hit a linear feature (either the line of hills or the depression before the control) on quite an acute angle...ie the lines they were trying to hit were parallel with their direction of travel, so no potential for safety/aiming off etc. My route choice indicated by the pink lines and arrows was slightly better. I decided to read the tracks and used the track bend (admittingly vague and inaccurate) as an ap and a definite place to turn so at least I was hitting those linear features perpendicular (although I foolishly didn't aim off and wasted a little bit of time relocating) Looking back at a better/safer way of doing it, another possibility may be going further right and using a few obvious features,A, B, C along with the vague tracks to read your way into the control. Dudes you have to have a plan!!!

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