Training Log Archive: AdventureGirl!

WOC Relay - Leg 1

This was so much fun. The incredible rain made things even more epic.
Goals were to stay in control of my race and sit back a little to use the others but not rely on them. I wanted to be confident in my own orienteering, and push hard when I could.

Things started off through the lake/start chute and got really narrow quite quickly. I took the power line for a while but it was so rugged that I cut off with a group down the small trail. They didn’t seem to be going to my forking so I broke away from them there. Looking at the GPS now I realized that I took the wrong route to my first control. Didn’t even realize that there was a trail almost directly there. Lost the pack with my forking way too early because of this.
There were people quite close to me while going to my second control so I really pushed to catch back up. Really hammered the spectator loop even though I could barely see in the rain. After that I was just less than 50m behind the second pack until control 9 where I made a small mistake. I had taken a roundabout route and then jammed my ankle between two rocks. I took a few walking steps and then told myself to HTFU and kept going. I didn’t take a good enough bearing from my AP and was hesitant going into the control which was on a cliff on the far side of a hill. Found it quickly but the pack in front of me was out of sight. The rest of the race was nice and clean. Was really confident coming through the thick green at the end, and that made me really happy since that terrain had screwed me up so many times in training.

Overall I’m super happy with this race. I was able to push hard and navigate very confidently essentially on my own for most of the race. After the uncertainties in training, that felt really good. And I was so happy that my ankle let me fly out there too! What an awesome ending to a kinda stressful week!