While I confess that I view course walking as overrated, and two times,
for me, tends to be overkill, there was a ProSolo at Wendover where I,
and maybe half the crowd, kept DNF'ing the same spot, over and over
again.
I felt really stupid and almost quit autocrossing forever. Okay, that's
a complete lie, but anyway.
So, during the lunch time walk through, I walked that section over and
over and over again, and DNF'ed AGAIN. Thankfully, so did everyone else,
and so they did some lining and added more cones, not to make us feel
better about ourselves, but there's just something wrong when everyone
keeps DNF'ing.
I watched Patty Yeo nearly drive into my mom at nationals. Except for
the fact that it could have just been awful, in hindsight, it is kind of
funny, especially listening to Patty's telling of the tale. Apparently,
the video crew interviewed her after her runs, apparently oblivious to
the image of the close encounter. It's one of those things where they
put your face in the corner of the frame and you add some commentary to
some footage of your run, and you can buy it later and show it off to
all of your friends. So, she was visualizing with great dismay what her
footage would look like, as she's giving the color commentary as she
nearly crashes into my mom, and decided that's not something she'd want
to spend money on.
I know that I'm pretty much alone in my course walking technique. Most
people walk the course over and over and over again, and many people
DNFed that very same section Patty Yeo did. So, it's not just one
person's brain fade or driver error. What helped me was knowing that it
WAS so easy to screw it up, I forced myself to look way over to the
left, but it was in no way obvious.
This is NOT a flaw of a "nationals style course." It was a flaw of that
one turn, specifically. I've seen some traditional SFR courses, using
the mini-racecourse design cause some near disasters, as well. All this
arguing over "national style courses" versus SFR courses is futile and
subjective. I say if course designers want to include "national" type
elements (whatever that means), just keep doing it (many of us thank
you), make sure it's clearly marked, and if you don't want to hear the
negative commentary, well, for heaven's sake, don't ask for it!
Katie
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