Orienteering 1:30:00 [3] 6.2 mi (14:31 / mi) +400m 12:06 / mi
shoes: Brooks Running 29
First half of the red course at the BAOC meet at Joe Grant with Josh! I checked the BAOC schedule, and it turned out that there was a BAOC meet sort of more or less on the way back up to the East Bay from Asilomar. Josh thought trying orienteering sounded fun, so we decided to go for it. I sort of failed to fully prepare him for the experience and extent of poison oak (or, like, even what poison oak is...), and he only brought running shorts, not tights or pants. We sort of debated what to do, and in the end we decided to stop at an REI for him to buy some pants on the way. Between waiting for the REI to open and then actually going to the REI, we ended up getting to the park almost 1.5 hours later than we'd initially planned. Oops.
Our original plan was that I would take Josh out on Yellow to teach him how things work, and then I would run Green while Josh ran Orange, but by the time we actually got to the park, it was clear there was only time for one course. Somehow I failed to realize that with only 1.5 hours before the courses closed, Red probably wasn't the best choice. Oops.
We had a fabulous time for the first couple of controls. I was doing the navigating and just verbalizing everything to Josh and showing him where we were on the map periodically, which I think is actually a nice way to introduce someone to orienteering who is already a runner. I then proceeded to fumble the long leg to 3 pretty badly and after deciding that the way we were going had far to much poison oak, bailed to a different route, which meant a lot of gratuitous climb and general bashing through bushes and stuff. We were both dying pretty badly by the time we got to 5, and I think we each drank like a third of a gallon of water, since we figured we were the last ones at the water control. We then checked the time and realized that if we were going to get back by 2pm, we'd better just bail and run to the finish - pretty disappointing, but the run back was several miles of almost entirely downhill and absolutely delightful.
So, so, so good to get out on a map and out into the green Bay Area hills today!!!