Orienteering (Raid The Hammer) 5:33:22 [4] 31.29 km (10:39 / km) +854m 9:22 / km
slept:2.75 shoes: Salomon S-Lab Fellcross 2
I wanted to do Raid The Hammer even though I've been running out of energy quickly since running the Javelina 100 in the heat two weeks ago. Dee and Audrey have been injured and sick respectively so we formed a team with the plan to just have fun. At least, that's what I thought! As always, these strong ladies are still in great shape even when they're not 100% so it was a very tough day for me physically. It was still lots of fun to explore the woods together on a beautiful day with terrific maps.
Dee and Aud are both excellent teammates so I got lots of towing and pushing in places where the terrain allowed. It was *way* more than my body was ready for. There were a few big climbs when I felt so weak that I couldn't pull myself up and thought I might topple over backwards off the cliff. There was plenty of ankle busting terrain so I was protective of the ankle I've twisted twice in the past four weeks; it held up. My brain got fuzzy with the physical effort but it was an OK nav race for me - neither great nor terrible.
It was interesting to see areas where I'd never been before. The finish line was in Stoney Creek and somehow I'd never been on the Bruce Trail on that side of Hamilton. There are some pretty views and gorgeous homes.
There were several different challenges that helped us reach the promised 50 controls for the club's 50th anniversary. We had two Matrix sections, a long-ish Walk the Line and three sections where we had to watch for flagging tape at "potential control" locations, then report to volunteers which controls we had seen. Sometimes I wished the WTL or potential controls had been placed in trickier places since we noticed teams accidentally missing some of those sections and saving time but that's a minor niggle. It was a fun course, tremendously hard work and a fantastic day for running in the woods!
The final map was mostly an aerial photo that I didn't wrap my head around immediately, which led to our biggest bobble of the day enroute to the dog park. We ran hard to the finish beside the school track - except it wasn't there. We spent several minutes in that area trying to find it tucked behind a wall or hill before we ran around the school and 'Bent directed us to the place it had been moved to - 4 minutes lost, according to GPS.
Fun day, completely zonked! One bruised kneecap and one big scrape but otherwise I seem to have survived. Thank you to all the DontGetLost staff and volunteers who work so hard on these events. It was a great day!