WCOC meet at Hurd SP in CT, new map by George. Red course, 6.7 km.
I thought I should make one proper attempt at orienteering this fall, and Hurd seemed the best choice, appealing in two ways -- a new map by George, curious to see what he had come up with, and woods that seemed like they would offer decent runnability and a lot of trail and road options. So off I went.
And overall, not too bad. The main concern was not to hurt myself, neither making the back worse nor coming up with some new ailment. Success on the latter, no new ailments I'm pretty sure; judgement on the former may have to wait a little as the back is sore, but it's not clear if it's the sore that goes away in a day or the sore that doesn't. It seems to be within the range of what I was hoping for, but we'll see. At least I felt like I didn't do anything traumatic.
Running a lot, but running very cautiously, and staying on trails a lot because I figured that lessened the odds of something bad happening. Still got very tired, especially when off-trail, because I haven't done any running or hiking on soft ground. But overall reasonably pleased with the effort. And my navigating was good enough, just a couple of small mistakes, maybe a minute or two in total.
And nice forest, nice map, nice weather, glad I went.