Orienteering 1:52:33 [3] 5.0 mi (22:31 / mi) +394ft 20:57 / mi
shoes: MPMW15:w
Wheaton - Blue
20 Controls, 6.3 km, 120 m
Actual Distance Traveled: 8.0 km
I was a little surprised that there was a blue course, there isn't always a blue course at Wheaton. This one didn't feel long enough to be a blue course, more like a long green or mid-distance red.
To make it a little more interesting I did not take a compass with me. A compass might have helped but I think that it also might have slowed me down a little bit. So I paid a little more attention to terrain features than I usually do and relied on my memories of past experiences orienteering at Wheaton Regional Park.
I only had a couple slips or real big mistakes. The first was when I was headed from 3 (118) to 4 (136). I left the paved trail that passed near 136 much earlier than I should have because I mistook one bend in the trail for another. I should have stuck with the paved trail until I reached the unpaved trail and then turned right or west. Instead I ended up wading through some thick vines for a while as I headed south towards 136. I was headed in the right general direction it was just very slow going.
The second mistake was when I was heading from 7 (129) to 8 (130). I went went right past 130 and kept going. I spotted the big Y but decided to continue heading east until I found 10 (132). Then I knew exactly where I was and that the big Y was indeed the big Y, and then headed west. I found 130 on the second attempt without any trouble.
The weather was great, not too cold and not too warm. There was some mud but not a lot. I worked up a bit of a sweat but I didn't get my feet wet.
At 3 PM I helped with control pickup. It was one of the fastest control pickups I've ever done. I picked up 7 controls and made it back to start in 20 minutes. I doubt that I covered much more than a half mile doing control pickup. The only tricky part was that some of the controls were close together and I got a little turned around between the streams and the trails but the controls were all exposed enough that I didn't lose probably more than 30 seconds to a minute.