orienteering race 1:11:08 [4] *** 5.7 km (12:29 / km) +90m 11:34 / km
12c shoes: Inov8 O-roc 280
DVOA Tyler - Green
In some ways, showing up later was probably beneficial. I heard there were a lot of problems early, but I think things were pretty cleaned up by the time I arrived on the scene.
One issue is the constant running out of Green maps - I got one from someone else, but I feel bad taking someone else's map. Personally, I like to save them and I have every map from every course I have ever done. It tends to be the most popular course - print more. There are various valid reasons why people might come later, and anyone arriving within the start window shouldn't have to worry about not getting a map.
Most of the control placements were trivial, but a few were probably unnecessarily buried in the green. (I heard other courses were worse in this regard.) The apparent intended route from 3 to 4 was to find a tiny little gap in the green and then walk through a marsh. I took one look at that muddled mess of vegetation in between, knowing I couldn't trust the veg on the map, and took a route around following the big stream. This unfortunately still resulted in a fighting through a mess of briars and then coming out far left of the control and backtracking through the field.
The last few controls (getting to 11 and 12) involved trails which suddenly dead-ended into unmapped swamps.
Actually felt good, like I had energy and could run a lot, compared to how sluggish I have been feeling lately.
AOWN (in kind of a sad way) on the way to 7, along the creek, a large bird flew up and away from me. (I think some sort of hawk, but maybe a vulture, although it didn't look that ugly.) Where it came from, there was a huge dead turtle with part of the shell ripped off. This area had signs of recent flooding and the turtle was all covered in mud so probably it drowned. The shell and head shape did not look at all right for a snapping turtle, but what other kind of huge turtles are in PA? I mean, the thing had to be at least 2 feet long. It looked more like a sea turtle than anything else.