orienteering race 1:50:27 [4] 4.1 km (26:56 / km) +140m 23:01 / km
9c shoes: Inov8 O-roc 280 Red Threedux
West Point Black Rock Forest Long - GreenY (F40+)
Turned map over and immediately saw the first several controls in green... oh great, my favorite. This led to me not feeling super confident right off the bat. I took the road to the trail and climbed all the way up on it, then cut in to 1 and found that without issue. However, I missed 2 low (too close to the swamp) and had to bounce back off the double bare rock hilltop just past it. A lot of other people were in here making the same mistake including Kathy and Corinne. The tons of horrible laurel and blueberry were like wading through a pool of jello. Such slow going.
I went out to the trail (finally able to move for a short period) and then went down to the enormous rock SW of the swamp. Kathy was coming in from the left and we would see each other through a lot of the remaining course. From there pushed through to the cliffs and climbed, probably going too far left, but found it.
Down to the trail, down by the end of Jim's Pond to the road, went to the bend and came in past 5 to 4. Kathy coming in from a different direction. I had not seen the flag for 5 but knew right where it should be, and it was.
Really no issues with the rest of it... the groundcover finally opened up a bit and was easier to move through, but then I had to go down through the same rocks at the end as yesterday. I'm glad this course was set at what seemed like not a long course distance because the condition of the woods made it lake a long course amount of time!
One of the best and most fun West Points for me, despite some of the organizational issues (I know half of the cadets have never done this and they had some extra limitations on them). I didn't really know what any of my results were and there seemed to be no way to find out, so we left before the awards ceremony since it would have been 1.5-2 hours of waiting. Sounds like I missed out on my bakery item :(