Orienteering 2:15:00 [3] ***
20c
US Champs, Big Sandy
12.5km w/ 410 Cm in 2:03:01
Not as calm before race as yesterday.
Careful to 1. Looked at C2 and decided on an ultra safe route on the road. Had precise map contact not 100m away from the control and then missed. Had to relocate off road to the north. To C3 counting two streams aiming right then turn left to the bag. Somehow I counted too fast and ended up searching one stream too short all the way up to the road again. Sigh... Slow to 4. Hesitant to 5; couldn't make sense of all the rocks and gray. And the day continued... I really tried to put the errors behind and just try to do each control the best I could; maybe I could have some fast splits or a fast second half. Overall, I was not successful in understanding the map, the terrain, or the relationship between the two. Bummer.
Though as others have said, it's a great area and I'd really like to have another go at running here.
I think the magifier caused me some problems today. First, it was so sunny that it was burning holes in my map. Well, not quite, but at times it focussed so much light I couldn't read the map. However, the real problem was aligning the map. It made it harder to read and align to the N/S lines as they shifted in and out of the magnifier window. At least that's my hypothesis of why I found C9 before C8.