Map Walk 3:00:00 [2] 4.7 km (38:18 / km)
shoes: Roclite 280-2015
I volunteered to lead the intermediate map walk, as a last-minute substitute for Jon, who was under the weather. As a group leader in general, I didn't do so well, because I didn't take a head count, didn't keep track of my flock, and didn't take care to spread myself among them to make sure everyone got the same information. But other than that, I had a great time and I think they did too.
We walked what Jon thought was an advancing Orange course, but what I thought was 100% advanced. I drilled the techniques that came up (this being the mid-Atlantic, it was mostly counting reentrants). I told them what I was doing with the map and compass. I helped them recognize terrain features. I told them what map symbols meant. And I blabbered about whatever came to mind, wisecracks and all. We spiked 9 out of 10 controls, and the one was when I let one of the participants make the plan and reluctantly went along. Nothing wrong with her plan or execution, but I wasn't tracking well and ended up ordering a relocation. After that, we didn't do anything that I didn't agree with.
Afterwards, the thing that struck me was how incredibly tiring it was! Walking this course in 3 hours was clearly more work than running it in 50 minutes, and in addition, being a chatterbox is hard for an introvert. For the rest of the evening, I recovered by standing at the road intersection alone in the dark and directing what little traffic there was, then lying in my bunk "reading" but actually dozing off. No game night for me.
Orienteering 1:30:00 [3]
OK, one other thing. While there was still light, I grabbed one of Thierry's advanced training maps and went out on the course. The first segment was a compass exercise, moving between little islands in a sea of white. Got that. Next was contour-only, and I didn't do so well. Had to backtrack on the first control and re-do. Missed #6 after a long leg fell apart at the last minute. Skipped #7 and went straight to the corridor.
Corridor was an abject failure. Starting from an obvious feature (on the road next to the water tower) I could not get to even the first control. I went back and tried it two more times, failing in different places each time. Too bad, I would have liked to have gotten further along.