Orienteering race 48:00 [4] 4.2 km (11:26 / km)
Blue Middle Semi-finals at CSU meet in Middlesex Fells.
Nate lost his compass just before the start, and he was starting 8 minutes behind me, so I left my compass with Chris at the start for him. Apparently he found his compass, but just too late for me.
I figured it wouldn't be too bad, since my shadow was pointing directly north, but it turns out that I rely on my compass a great deal to measure distances for pace counting - losing that was just as much an impact as the north-pointing.
It was a good exercise - I was reading the map in a much more detailed fashion than usual. But I also lost a fair amount of time.
Perhaps I'll update this when I have the map.
Orienteering race 1:03:00 [4] *** 5.8 km (10:52 / km)
spiked:13/17c
Middle Distance B Final at CSU A-meet at Middlesex Fells (Pine Hill).
It was a bit warm this AM, but it was ridiculously warm this afternoon, which made for a very tough second race of the day.
I did go out a bit on the conservative side (running-wise more than navigation-wise), and was OK thru C4. When I came over the hill toward C5, I just couldn't decipher the rocks on the map vs real life, so I lost some time sorting that out. Then I was slow picking my way over to C6.
I was good for a couple of controls, then had the big error of the afternoon. I didn't see the right route to C9, because of my worthless eyesight and the "settlement" boundary. I thought I was being clever going out the way I came in, to catch the left trail quickly, but apparently I blew through the first intersection and the minor disaster was on. I lost at least 4 minutes and fell back behind Dylan and a couple of cadets that I had put some ground on.
I was then OK thru 90% of C13, but lost some time with the confusing trails near the bag. Ended up going straight toward C14, which was probably a minor mistake, since the trail was pretty twisty. C15 was slow going up the hill. I didn't quite catch the cadets who took the high road at C16, so their route was better.