Orienteering race 52:55 [5] *** 5.9 km (8:58 / km) +198m 7:41 / km
14c shoes: Icebug olx
U.S. Classic Champs, Day 2, BOK Birkhead Wilderness, M60. Another fine day, in the adjacent section of the same woods, similar terrain, fine woods, and pretty easy control placements. I was a little slow on #1 (went straight over the three ridges) and bobbled #2 (straight up the ditch south to the trail, hmmm, don't see a trail, wing it for a while towards the big reentrant, don't see that either, back to the trail, there it is and there's the reentrant and life is good). Istvan Nagy caught me at the control, having been somehow rescheduled to 2 minutes after my start time. I was unhappy about that, but if I had executed correctly I would still have been ahead of him, so who's to blame? We traded controls, I got 3, he got 4 and 5, I got 6, then I ran hard over the hill to 7 and never saw him again. On the way down the spur to #8 I caught Walter Siegenthaler, who was in 3rd after yesterday, and dropped him on the big hill up to 9. Something tells me hill climbs are my friend. No. 12 was a nice leg, a mess of complex reentrants, which I counted carefully, and having drifted low I climbed straight up the hill and spotted the control a couple of contours farther up. Small errors on #13 (suckered into the wrong control down the spur a ways) and 14 (missed the trail, tripped over a wire fence and hit the ground flat, got up, bashed west, and finally saw the trail and field). Great run and a lot of fun, first in M60 by a couple of minutes, and managed to slip into 3rd place overall for a medal.
