Before we went in search of enclaves, we completed race 3 at Geel. This was a fairly standard sprint in a mix of residential streets and parkland. The first few controls were very simple, lulling us into a false sense of security. After a handful of controls in a park, we had a long leg (15-16 on Ian’s map below), with route choice to the left or the right. Thinking I could see a direct route via some small laneways, I ran smack bang into a dead end. I’d missed the uncrossable fence half way along the lane. Why did I go down there? Because I could see half a dozen others did exactly the same thing. In fact, Ted and Ian were among the many who fell for it There are always mistakes made when you get complacent. Apart from that hitch, the rest was straightforward. Afterwards we decided not to watch the elites doing knockout sprinting in the rain, so we headed for Baarle (Fun With Maps).
That same evening was the Indoor Sprint, a free bonus event, which of course we’d all signed up for. The boys were doing the Long, while Margi and I opted for the Short. It took me 75 minutes to complete a nominally 1.4 km course, with 21 controls and a map flip, over 4 levels of a series of interconnected campus buildings.
The first control was fine, on the same level we entered on. From there it all fell apart. I’d forgotten the technique of finding the staircase nearest the control, looking for it on the floor you were currently on, and figuring out how to join the two. These buildings were an absolute labyrinth, complicated further by artificial barriers and one way corridors. So you had to go down to go up, and vice versa. Over and over again.
I was in the basement, which resembled a catacomb, when I caught my toe on a small concrete lip that should have been marked with hazard tape, but wasn’t. Down I went, headlong onto polished concrete. I had Captain Kumamon tucked into my drink bottle holder (doing his first Belgian event), and he hit the deck first, followed immediately by me. I said words that small children should not be subjected to, then lay prone trying to decide if I’d broken anything. Eventually I sat up. The damage was a grazed knee, a larger abrasion on my forearm, some hurt pride, and a slightly squashed bear. Putting on my Big Girl Pants, I picked myself up, summoned my resolve – I still had 19 controls to find – and continued.
The focus required to navigate this sort of thing is a whole new level of intensity. You have to know where you are, work out which level your next control is on, find the best staircase to get there and remember its letter (they were named A to R). Then you had to look for blockages and dead ends, and figure out which level you needed to be on, to get round those blockages – “so I’m at stair N on level 2, and I need to get to stair P on level 3, but to do that I need to find stair O and take it to level 4”. All of that stays in your brain for precisely 5 seconds, unless you mutter it over and over to yourself. Repeat 21 times, whilst climbing about 50 flights of stairs, navigating down endless corridors that all look the same. At one stage I thought “I’m in the kitchen, but my control is in the toilet”. At that stage I realised this was officially nuts.
Eventually I emerged at the finish, blinking like a bear coming out of a long winter’s hibernation, my brain completely fried and my legs completely dead. I think I had fun? Ask me in about a week.
The awards:
Debbie – the Denise Pike award for skin loss
Ted – the privilege of doing the dishes, for missing his 7th control
Margi – the winner’s award for making fewer mistakes, and finishing higher in the results list, than the rest of us
Ian – a new record for the DROC Top which had Climbed the Highest Number of Unnecessary Stairs
If you want to see for yourself, watch this video – a very good depiction of what it was like. Note the long periods of Standing Still, and the many instances of Unnecessary Stairs.
PS How does Captain K navigate? Of course, he takes Bear-ings.
Ian’s map part 1:
Deb’s map part 2:
dipidydoo 