Running warm up/down (Warm-up) 10:25 [2] 0.5 mi (20:49 / mi)
slept:7.5 weight:171.5lbs
At Mont Alto State Park, PA. Warm-up for the QOC/SVO meet around the parking lot, along the stream and by the pavillion. The big nice dinner from the night before kept the weight up--thanks Heidi and Dave.
Orienteering race (Score-O) 1:04:31 [4] **** 5.95 km (10:51 / km)
spiked:15/21c
QOC/SVO at Mont Alto, PA. The sun came out for this nice event. I forgot to bring my gators but athletic tape on the shins worked fine. I hadn't been on this section of the map before but studied the details of the broad mountain side a bit earlier in the week. We marked our own courses. The choice of strategies was as anticipated. Start low and loop back high or do the reverse. After marking courses, I avoided studying further. The setting didn't give much choice for those planning to get everything in the alotted 75 minutes. I had planned to start low to ease the climb and had gotten into a conversation w/Heidi and Dave Onkst about it in which we both convinced Dave that going low first was best. After talking w/Ted Good I learned he was going high first and he asked if I was going to do the same so we could compare splits later. I told this to Dave as we passed warming-up but my earlier arguments apparantly held sway with him--sorry Dave. I glanced at the map and changed my mind when I saw that the attack going high first wasn't bad. This kind of follows some wishy-washy pattern I've been in this spring in which I'm not trusting myself enough. This time, the result worked-out okay for me. While fresh I climbed quickly and recovered to run better later. My route was: 20, 21, 19, 18, 17, 15, 14, 16, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I lost time at 19 (too low--1:15 error), 16 (too high--0:45), 9 (drawn off by a ribbon--0:15), 7 (passed it too low--0:20), 6 (forgot to draw the new road so seeing it made me hesitate and back-track--0:25), 5 (rushed out to get ahead of a line of horses and still didn't realize I was on a new road--2:30) for a total lost time of 5:30. I was reading well and running on bearing well, at least for me, for most of the time. I took longer safer routes in technical areas but probably lost time by opting not to use the trail going to 12. I lolly-gaged in from #1 and missed the punch initially. It was enough to lose me a place as Clem finished 6 seconds faster on his run. My endurance is improving. The vegetation, climb and errors did slow me down but I never got real tired.