The sun is setting. Beautiful to look at? Yes. A little daunting when you're trekking or biking in the wilderness? Also yes.
As the sun sets, a lot of new challenges get added to teams out racing. During the day, you can rely on being able to see a ways into the woods, across a lake, and read the terrain to help you stay oriented on your map. No shocker here, but when the sun goes down, your field of view narrows WAY down. Now, you can only see what your headlamp can illuminate. Even with a great headlamp, in the woods reflections from trees and shadows make it hard to get a good idea of distances, the terrain all but disappears except what's right in front of you and seeing across the lake? Well... you can often kinda see the outline of the tree line. As the night progresses, there can be fog to add an extra bit of challenge. So... how do teams stay on track? Careful attention to a bearing (setting a direction on your compass and keeping 'red fred in the shed', pace counting and several other tricks become a life line.
Night time also wreaks havoc on pace and momentum. The change in senses sees a lot of teams slow down, and start to question whether their pace count is right ("I think we've gone too far" is an oft heard statement, but often... you need to go further, the night is playing tricks!). Teams will need to stay focused to keep their pace and momentum.
And of course... there's the drowsiness and challenge of brains thinking that it's a great time for a nap. Teams will sing, take caffeine pills, eat crunch stuff, make jokes, tell stories, etc. to stay engaged and keep awake.
One good bit of news for tonight? It's going to be a glorious full moon, so that will certainly be a pleasant little advantage this year! Oh... and HQ has a digital eye on everyone!
(moon image: Flickr: Full Moon - Creative Commons by gnuckx)
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