Orienteering 2:29:01 [3] 18.4 km (8:06 / km) +680m 6:50 / km
Susquehanna Stumble - an easy victory in the absence of stiff competition, though there was the challenge of pacing myself to make it to the finish despite soreness resulting from the previous day's 5K. I swear I used quite recently to be able to do at least a 5K without significant aftereffects, even if 10Ks were problematic. Of course, those were generally 5Ks not including a continuous downhill dropping about 50 meters over the course of about 600 horizontal meters so maybe it's the fast downhill running teaming up with the fast paved running rather than clear evidence of my inevitably coming decrepitude. In any case, after the bracingly cold stream crossing to the start, communal putting on of socks and shoes, etc., I seemed to figure out the obvious route to the first control about as fast as anyone so I had a small lead in the initial trail running. I didn't run very hard but probably the narrowness of the trail bottled up some of the people who might have been expected to be right behind me. In any case, partway up the spur after leaving the trail I looked back and saw, as far as I could tell, no one trying to bridge the gap so I gave up on having any company for the early going and turned my attention back to navigation. Which was, unsurprisingly at the speed and effort levels involved and in my home terrain type, basically clean for the duration of the race. Behind me, it seems Victor Lin navigated and ran fairly consistently while Jan Merka and Dave Onskt traded massive navigation errors on successive controls early in the race to end up three to four minutes behind Victor at the end.