Orienteering race 1:23:42 [4] 4.7 km (17:49 / km)
Baldwin Hill in Ashburnham, MA. NEOC event. Great map, nice terrain, but lots of deadfall and branches partially down making for slow movement through terrain. Lots to jump, climb over, lots to avoid, lots to keep from sticking in the eyes!
#3 was a bit sloppy, and #4 was a mess. Thought I was to the right following the curved reentrant and finally decided to bail out to the stone wall beyond the control. Got lucky and ran into it while on the way.
#5 should have been excellent. Moved well across the bottomlands and up the hillside. Was just a little to the right and corrected, coming upon the spur with all the rocks about 200m from the control. Got excited by seeing a knoll with rock on it about 100 m south of the rocky spur (now I realize that the 100 m distance should have been a warning) and sprinted to it. No control. Looked around a bit. Saw Ken Walker, Sr. heading toward the correct location (unbeknownst to me at the time) but I couldn't make the map make sense, so I headed back to the rocky spur looking for hte small marsh. Check. Then I noticed that my map was not oriented correctly. Duhhhhh! Headed "roughly" in the right direction, but missed it again. Decided to go back to the rocky spur a third time and take a bearing. Hummmm, that worked, surprise, surprise. When will I ever learn! Rushing again got me into trouble.
On #6 I screwed up again. Took a bearing from #5 to get myself marching along, but it didn't feel right and that stone wall was oh-so-tempting, so I did not stay on the bearing. Came upon another control with water first. Punched. Drank. Then checked. Damn! Wrong control. At least I checked this time. :) Floundered around trying to figure out where I was and eventually stumbled upon it. Terrible navigation. No navigatilon, really.
Next 2 were OK. #9 was sloppy. I used compass too roughly (again. . .) and hit trail before wall. Planned to follow trail to the break in the wall, but short cut when I saw the wall. Mistake. Floundered. Eventually,used the N-S wall to relocate (using the wall junction). Stupid leg. Did not have much drive to finish hard.
Would like to go back and do it again. Accurately,this time.