Orienteering 1:30:00 [3] 4.0 km (22:30 / km)
shoes: Inov8 Oroc 280
Picking up controls after the Pax River NJROTC event. A steady downpour pretty much the whole time. Valerie had the pickup really well organized, and handed me a bagged and sealed map with a course consisting of 8 controls, 2.4k. There was a fairly long trail run getting in to the first one. Trouble with #2, got to one of those big ravines with complex topography and couldn't locate myself. Then, what a disaster on the 4th control, a ditch in thick vegetation and fiddly little contours, which I couldn't read very well in the conditions, and I just couldn't find it. Tried 3 different attacks and finally succeeded by bouncing off some larger reentrants on the far side. At least a half hour on that.
At this point it was already getting dark, and still raining, and I had 4 more to go, but fortunately they were in a more open area of woods and went quickly. There was one steep slope that was unstable due to the wet leaves and mud, which I MacGyvered up using the technique of repeatedly jamming a control stand into the slope and bracing my foot against it. Oh yeah, it was fun.
