Orienteering race (ultralong) 3:38:08 [2] *** 20.0 km (10:54 / km) +2264ft 9:18 / km
ahr:134 max:167 spiked:19/24c slept:6.0 shoes: Icebug Acceleritas #2
Did most of the course on my own and did better than I had expected to do. A leg-by-leg commentary for some of the legs, as well as some comments on my course overall, follow. Did not read the map carefully enough in the vague area coming up to 5, ended up running all the way to the lake and re-locating at the re-entrant there. On most legs, went close to the straight line, only avoiding unnecessary climb whenever there was an obvious way to do so. It's unclear whether going straight as much as I did was sub-optimal, but it is clear that I should get better at considering contours in my navigation and route choice. The largest, probably effective, deviation from the straight line was on the way from 9 to 10, where I first took the trail around to the right to a green thicket next to the power line, then contoured the rest of the way. On the way to 11, made the mistake of going too far to the right and crossing all the re-entrants, instead of just following the creek most of the way. Did well at route choice and execution on the way to 15: first went right and hit the first pointy finger of the lake, then headed left and found the straight trail to the intersection, turned right at the intersection, passed the grassy glen, then cut down to the river at just the right spot. On the way to 17, made the biggest "getting lost" error: ended up one re-entrant too far, went even farther to check the next re-entrant over, then went back.