Orienteering race 1:43:39 [4] *** 6.38 mi (16:15 / mi)
spiked:7/10c shoes: VJ Falcon (2009-?)
The Kid. My feet got really torn up by my shoes, and I was running with crazy blisters for the rest of the week. =(
If I'm going to do something like JWOC next year where I'm orienteering every day (or 6/7 days) for 2 weeks, I need to solve this blister problem somehow. Suggestions, anyone?
With regards to the race:
Going to the first control, I started off by running 50-100 yards in the wrong direction before I got my map oriented. However, after I fixed that, I overtook Kelsey, (who was leading the group of people in the correct direction), and motored along for a while. However, I wasn't distancing things carefully, and stopped about 200m short of the control to investigate some similar cliff features near a similar marsh/pond feature. After realizing my mistake, I booked it to the correct control, and came out about 10th.
On the way to two, Matej and I were together, and decided that we'd stick together for the rest of the race. We cut south around the pondish-thing, and went thgouth the gap in the cliffs, around the top of the uncrossable marsh, and over the top of the cliff that had the control on it. We hit 3 with no problems. After 3, I believe we were tied for third -- (Christina and (whoever came in 1st or 2nd for the men who was not Rick)) were ahead of us. On the way to 4, we foolishly went around the lake feature to the north, because I had seen a control that was clearly not the right control and was going to it. Matej saw the correct control and was able to get to it, but Rick and someone else beat me to it. I caught up to Matej on the way to 5, running away from Rick, but I was pretty winded. We made it to 5 without any major problems. On the way to 6, we stopped short a bit, but then someone in front of us punched it obviously, and we found it. (Transition to USGS map...) We found 7 with no problems, but at this point the blister on my left heel was too painful for me to run on, and I dropped out, stopping for almost 10 minutes to try to cover it with the athletic tape I had used to tie my shoelaces and tie my cliff shots to my arm. Matej went ahead to 9 (8 was the only reasonable skip), and then lost 20-30 minutes on 11. I was passed by 6 or 8 people, including Rick and Jan, but still managed to finish reasonably well, walking the rest of the course. I basically went straight to 9 and 10, but then on the way to 11 I ended up too far East, and had to cut through the marsh in order to get to it. Oh well. I was 4th in M20, and 8th among Men, I believe.