Moscow Champs Classic,
the final: 12.45 km/feeble climb. Classic
Moscow orienteering: light to medium-green woods, tons of trail running, controls on depressions in flat woods 100 m away from any other mapped feature. The standing Moscow team which ran in the Russia Champs a couple days ago was admitted without qualifying, plus 35 qualifiers from yesterday. I got through fairly unscathed,
14th/31 starters; 19:40 behind the winner. Several of the top 10 are Russian B-team, so I am fairly happy with the result (my best ever in Moscow Champs was I think 10th about 9 years ago---I have to check the old maps). It appeared to me that most runners I saw in the woods moved noticeably faster than myself, and slowed down a ton near the controls or made errors; they also seemed to prefer shortcutting through the bland light-green woods to going around on trails, and some split analysis showed that trail vs. woods made no difference whatsoever. AHR = 165.
