Orienteering race 2:17:46 [3] *** 13.9 km (9:54 / km) +307m 8:55 / km
spiked:22/29c shoes: Luath Blue XTalon 212s
Finally catching up...
Ontario Champs meet by STARS, Long M21, 11.4 km
Meet 16, course 22
So, since this was likely to be a good A meet comparable course and I was eligible for nothing and I am a touch worried that running blue might start to get harder soon, I ran my first North American blue course not at a local meet. After the previous two runs, nothing could go wrong ;)
I started off a bit sluggishly but settled in during the first couple of legs. The escarpment was beautiful. There had been an ice storm during the spring which had dropped a lot of small limbs, trees, and debris that made the forest a bit treacherous. I found the long leg 6 pretty challenging to take the cross country route but many of the other long legs were really aided a lot by trail running. Caught up to Alex Teutch by leg 9 and we went back and forth until leg 24. This was fun and kept me pushing and trying to find any place where time could be found. His navigation was with few exceptions better but I was probably a touch quicker. Cutting around to control 21 using the opposite side of a spur, I finally didn't pick my feet up enough and hooked a downed tree, tried to grab a smaller tree as I went down watching the barkless truck approaching my face. Smacked pretty solidly, there was plenty of blood and my nose was a bit numb but I didn't seem to have stunned myself. So I started off again, slower, wiping blood from the map every few steps. By mouth breathing, I figured it would clot up and I could get on with it. Saw a startled Alex a couple of controls later, checked my nose was still straight, and told him I was fine, keep running. I made a significant error on 23 drifting off the E side rather than the S side of a plateau (5 min), another 90+ seconds at C24 (the control had a big black incorrect number modified with a pen to another incorrect number and the actual number in a small blue number below it on the label; it took me several returns to the control before I was positive it was right), and then 90 more seconds at C25 (parallel reentrant to C26 first). Everything from here was fine and I finished well exceeding my goal of not being last.