Orienteering race 1:05:41 [4] *** 5.0 km (13:08 / km)
(injured)
Ontario Orienteering Championship - Part 2 of the Long Event
I had a great first 60 seconds in today's race. Found the start triangle right away (unusual for me!) and started running in the right direction. But then things went horribly wrong for awhile, and it took me almost 25 minutes to do the first 3 controls of a 12-control course that I was trying to finish in 50 minutes. By then, I was with people I knew had started behind me, and worse - they looked clean and relatively burr-free.
On #1, I got sucked down the wrong re-entrant on a steep hill. It even had a control in it, but luckily I noticed that it wasn't mine. On #2, I just must have picked a bad route. I haven't had time to look at the map to see what the other options were, but clearly my route sucked. On #3, upon discussing it with another competitor afterward, we think there was a trail mapping issue, but at the time, I just assumed that I was continuing my trend of being a complete idiot today, and wondered if I would ever again have that nice feeling of running straight to a control and finding it exactly where I expected. Actually, that is how the rest of the race went, but unfortunately I will mostly remember this race for my very bad start!
There is always a silver lining - and in my case, it's that I was able to run (OK, sometimes I walked) for 65 minutes through the woods! The terrain was nastier today, and I was less able to protect my bad knee. I twisted the ankle once and I even had a face plant - but I didn't go gimpy after that. When I got home and took off the knee brace, it still felt loose and bizarre, but I'm excited that I seem able to run short distances. This is a big improvement from a month ago!
Oh yes, and there's another silver lining that I almost forgot to mention. While I was out there having a tough time, I guess that some other people were too. Somehow I managed to hang on and win the Ontario Orienteering Champs for my age group. Nice medal and a yummy pie delivered personally to my home through the kindness of Etoile, Hammer and Adventure Girl. (I had to make a post-race dash to host our family Thanksgiving.)