biking (city rogaine) 5:00:37 [2] 37.35 mi (8:03 / mi) +745ft 7:54 / mi
Rochester Map Adventure. Did the 5-hour version on a bike, mostly because it didn't seem a good idea to do it on foot just 6 days after the marathon, also partly just to have the bike experience -- did the 5-hour on foot last year -- and see how it compared.
It certainly was different. Much less stressful physically (though I suppose the proper answer to that is that I should have gone faster). Also more difficult to be coordinated, needed at least three hands, what with dealing with the questions and writing down the answers and holding on to the bike. One result was I only drank a little bit, maybe a quarter of the one bottle I was carrying, and ate about a dozen Cliff shots. Doing more required either coordination I didn't have, or more time stopped.
Screwed up the navigation a bunch. One in a macro sense, I had 15 minutes to plan, and didn't really do much other than fold the map to fit it in a map case and figure out which way I was starting off. Could easily have drawn out the whole route, but I was too lazy. So I think at various points I wasn't making the best route decisions. And then towards the end, getting short of time, and screwed up one route, cost several minutes I could have put to good use, right in downtown Rochester.
Energy was pretty good all the way, though I was getting a little lazy in the 3rd and 4th hours, maybe thinking I had plenty of time. By the time I realized I didn't, it was too late.
Anyway, there were 125 points. I think I got all but 4, plus I was 20 seconds late, so that costs one more. Tentative results had me in 3rd, but last time they checked the answers, with the results sometimes changing a good bit, and I think that is the plan this time too. So won't know for sure for a couple of days. But just a little bit disappointed in myself.
Otherwise it was quite glorious. A great tour of the city. A challenge to do the whole bike thing, dealing with curbs and one-way streets and traffic and traffic lights and potholes and a couple of parks where you had to stay off your bike and just a whole lot of times getting partway off and then back on. Sometimes you could figure the answer without stopping, just remember it until the next one or two, but most of the time you had to stop, to find the answer and/or to be able to read it. And then of course writing it down too.
But really really fun. And I don't think I broke the traffic laws more than once every couple of minutes, trying to be as law-abiding as I could, but no point being obsessive about it. But also no point in being stupid, and in that regard I don't remember anything even close to a close call. Which is good.
Thanks to Rick Lavine and Dick Detwiler for all their efforts to make this happen. And for ordering up such a perfect day, not a cloud in the sky.