Orienteering race 1:28:43 [4] *** 7.0 km (12:40 / km) +225m 10:55 / km
spiked:9/14c slept:7.25
West Point A-Meet - Classic Race.
Much better than yesterday AM, but not nearly as good as yesterday PM. I let myself get too discouraged when I saw how late it was getting after C9. That cost me some time which could have changed a decent race into a great race.
I started off to the left for C1, to avoid the green near the nose and go around the reentrant, aiming for the trail, but I went way left, and wound up left of the clearing with the tower, and then I was clean to the bag. C2 looked troublesome - I got over the first set of hills and then I had nothing, so I just went slowly on bearing and pace count, which got me in the neighborhood. C3 wasn't too bad - I was able to check off some features along the way. I lost a couple of minutes on C4 - I missed the flag on the way by, so I relocated to the top of the hill N of the circle and was back in business. The early contours got me headed in the right direction to C5 and the water to the right helped me into the circle. I lost a couple of minutes more on C6 - I tried to go straight, but didn't pay enough attention to the contours. This should have been an easy control, or at least a trivial control to pull off a quick recovery. By the time I punched, Samantha was bearing down on the control.
I stayed low leaving C6, even though my goal on this massive leg was to run as much trail as possible. I thought I was angling up the wide reentrant, but luckily it was the smaller reentrant that popped me out on the road, near the bend, with Samantha chasing me. I took a right at the T and paused at the trail junction to decide if that was worth taking and she went zipping by, staying on the road. That cemented my choice, but she left the road earlier than I thought I wanted to, and I continued on, which was a poor choice, since as I got going thru the woods, it became clear that I wanted to go left of the swamp. At this point feet caught me, and since I was just going to run hard to the road, and he was headed that way, I tried to stay close. We hit the road and I kept pushing hard, and he left the road, basically on my line, but I wanted no part of that route. I started to catch Samantha again as I stayed on the road past the big splotch of green. Once again, Samantha entered the woods earlier than me, I left the road at the little hilltop on the right. There was more green than mapped, so I couldn't hold the bearing that I had taken, nor could I see any features. Eventually my pace count told me that I had to be beyond the control, and I went to a small hilltop to relocate, when Samantha and someone else came running from behind me. I realized which hilltop I was on, and was able to get back to the flag, but they were long gone. On the way into C8, I saw feet again, and punched just before him. Looking back at the control codes, I'm guessing his leg was from my C5 to my C8, so he clearly had a big problem after I saw him leave the road.
C9 was going to be another fairly long leg, so I just wanted to get to a trail. feet was headed my way, so I tried to keep up thru the woods, and pretty much did, but only because he paused to punch another control. He just used the trail briefly, while I used it to figure out how the heck I was going to get to the control. By the time I got to the trail junction, a good 350m right of the line, it was clear that I was not going to want to try to go right of the cliffs, so I was going to have to go 150m left of the line to take the trail to the left of the cliffs. With all of that extra running, I was sure I had just had another bad leg, looked at my watch, saw I was not going to be anywhere near 10min/km, and got depressed. And leaving C9 it was uphill, so I did some walking, then there was a plateau full of those annoying little (blueberry?) bushes, so I walked some more. I ended up spiking C10, but at a very low speed. I wasn't so lucky on C11 - I saw the first couple boulder pairs, first right of the line, then left, but then there was too much rock for me to deal with. I kept thinking the next little cliff would be mine, but it wasn't, so I gave up and went down to the flatter area, and was able to see the flag, so I climbed back up. A third of the way to C12, a youngster was having troubles, so I gave him a ballpark idea of where we were - he realized his next control was mine, so he followed me in, and we caught someone else. I went left towards C13, but not left enough - I wasn't below the cliffs, and they became quite impassable, so I had to climb back up a bit. I wound up catching some of the green but worked my way past the end of the pronounced cliff and shortly after found myself at the top of a high cliff, and a fourth guy joined the train, so I thought "great, just below me is the bag", but no. But I was at the top of another cliff, and hustled down again while the others paused - I was able to punch and scram before they made it down.
I saw the trail to C14 on the ground before I had a chance to see it on the map, so it was off to the races.
It wasn't until I returned from the hospital with Z that I saw the results and found out that my late-race depression was unwarranted and only managed to cost me some time and places. Had I known that 11min/km would win and 12 min would be plenty good enough for 3rd, I may have been able to stay motivated. Yet another lesson learned.