Orienteering (A-Meet) 1:14:53 [4] 6.67 km (11:14 / km) +340m 8:57 / km
spiked:7/14c
Troll Cup A-meet Red Course. I had a lot of trouble with this map since the terrain was the thickest I had run in since I was in Norway. Parts of the map were so thickly wooded with pine trees that it was dark enough cause problems reading the map. This wasn't the bulk of my problem however.
Because the terrain was so thick underfoot, I wasn't able to read the map very well on the run. I didn't adjust to this right away since I hadn't run on anything so thick in a long time, and I didn't slow down to read the map. I ended up blowing the second and third controls and losing approximately 9 minutes total.
I managed to get myself back together, but I still hadn't figured out that I needed to adjust to the terrain. I ended up heading out for number 9 without having my route choice fully planned, and had to waste some time figuring it out since the leg was close to 2 kilometers. I ended up taking mostly trails, but they were so small and windy that I didn't really get much of a chance to read the map. I hit number 5 ok, but I had not read ahead to number 6. This is where I started having problems with the darkness of the woods.
I lost 30 seconds on number 7, a minute on 8, a minute on 10, and 15 seconds on 13 all because I had not fully read the details around the control before wandering into the circle. Overall, my technique was awful. I never adjusted to the thick terrain, and as a result didn't read the map enough or in enough detail.
I still had quite a bit of energy coming into the last few controls and was able to really blaze them.