Running 10:00 [3]
shoes: New Balance Orienteering
Brisk warm-up jog at the Harriman training camp. During the uphill intervals, I managed to fall and hit my knee on a log *again*, so that hurt for most of the morning relay exercise.
Strength 5:00 [3]
shoes: New Balance Orienteering
Butt kicks, knee lifts, Russian high kick thingies, grapevine, bounds, running backwards, and windmills (with arms) under the direction of the French team.
Orienteering 1:42:00 [3] 5.5 km (18:33 / km)
(injured) shoes: New Balance Orienteering
"Relay" at Harriman with each person running 4 legs each. I was paired with Linda Kohn, and we were instructed to not actually wait to tag off to each other, so my experience was more like a series of short loops separated by some very small amount of time.
My first loop was one of the longer ones and went terribly. Controls 1 and 2 went really well. I spiked both of them and was feeling pretty good. Control 3 was a much longer leg and I knew I was going to have some trouble. Unfortunately, I was trying to go faster than I could navigate. I got a bit off track and wasn't exactly sure where I was anymore and slowed down A LOT. I then found a control, in the correct general area for control 3. Things didn't look exactly right to me, but Harriman is the sort of place where it is easy to force things to match up with the map in my head, so I figured all was well. A couple of minutes lost - not good, but not terrible and went off to number 4. Unfortunately it turned out that I had not in fact found number 3, but rather a control for the afternoon exercise, so when I went off in search of number 4, I was not attacking from the correct location. I started getting more and more confused and things started not matching up to the point that even I couldn't convince myself that they were correct until I relocated off a marsh. I then found the real 3, but by this point wasn't really confident about anything, so I went unnecessarily slowly to 4, 5, and the finish, still feeling really unsure of where I was.
I got to the finish moments before Linda came back from her first loop (turns out she was on one of the shorter loops but I didn't realize this at the time and felt even worse about my loop), so without a chance to grab some water or rest at all, I immediately left on my second loop. This loop went much better, but I still screwed up one control. I tried to contour around a hill and in an effort not to go too low, ended up too high. I searched around a bunch of different groups of rocks for the control and was on my way to a far away marsh to reattack when I came upon the control much lower than I expected. This time, when I got back I drank a bit of water and rested for about a minute before starting out on loop 3.
This was the short loop. I screwed up the first control a bit. I went one group of cliffs too far. (Apparently several other people made the same mistake because the moss around this cliff was really torn up.) I started hunting around at other cliffs and found the control sort of hidden down in the blueberries. (I may have had help from one of the French guys coming through and finding this control while I was looking around. I honestly don't remember.) The rest of the loop went well if slowly.
I got back and more or less immediately headed out on the last loop. I decided to move slowly and not make stupid mistakes, which worked well. I found Alex sitting on the ground injured part way through and stopped to help her for about a minute, but she told me she was fine, so I continued on and finished.
Orienteering 1:12:00 [3] 4.7 km (15:19 / km)
(injured) shoes: New Balance Orienteering
This started out quite badly but ended pretty well. I started out trying to run faster than I could successfully navigate, which was I think the big issue. I got stuck in some green on the way to number 1. I floundered my way out of it and immediately found the control at about the same time as Ross (who started 2 minutes after me). I then, in a moment of extreme stupidity, decided to see how long I could keep Ross in sight. This went terribly and while I didn't go the wrong direction to number 2, I had a lot of hesitation when I realized I wasn't exactly sure where I was. (Needless to say I did not keep Ross in sight for very long.) I did pretty well going to number 3, but 4 was a complete disaster. I had to reattack twice for this control. I think I lost about 15 minutes in controls 1, 2, and 4. After this I decided if I wanted to actually finish the course I better get my head on straight and start navigating. 5, 6, and 7 all went well. Going to 8, I'm not sure I took the best route choice (seeing as I got stuck in some green stuff), but I executed it technically ok, if not quickly. 9-12 went really well. This was in an absolutely gorgeous area of Harriman, and I actually felt like I could both run and navigate at the same time, which was nice :-). 13 was mostly fine, but I got screwed up with the vegetation (which I'm pretty sure has changed a bit) and lost a bit of time in the circle. The same happened with 14, which I felt especially stupid about, but it turns out I actually did pretty well comparatively here since everyone was confused with the vegetation. I then proceeded to run towards the large group of people in the center of the field instead of the actual finish (oops...) and had to correct in the "chute".