Orienteering race 24:05 [5]
Sprint Green Y
MP.. again a bit of a bummer but my time wasn't too great anyway. Went from 12-16.. No idea why. The 3 controls I missed were very close together so that probably played a part in it. I guess I was also trying to make up time for #8 which took me 6 min,, what the heck it should have taken me 30 seconds.
I really have to slow down my thoughts, they are always moving a hundred miles per hour when ever I get a bit mixed up, in turn killing me even more. The scale messed with me a bit too, things came up so fast...
I also now have an impressive and quite painful bruise on my knee from a fist sized rock that hit me, from where it came, I have no idea. Something funny though is that I was thinking the whole time 'don't skip a control. You've done it before.. today you will not..' - another chance to improve
Running warm up/down 11:00 [2]
Orienteering race 23:41 [5]
Relay (Woman's US Junior team 1)
Not that great, again #2 decided to screw me over. (Apparently I wasn't the only one that had trouble with it, Meg and Anna did too) Spent 8 minutes looking for it, running up and down the side of a hill looking for the stinking thing. I now see what I did, was looking to the left of it. Again tried to catch back up, and made no other mistakes but it messed me up. A really fun race though :) quite intense but good.
I've pinpointed some things I need to work on...
1) choosing better route choices (#2 in the long course) - I seem to always want to take the safe way, convincing myself that it will be faster than going the much shorter and maybe trickier route. I think that I won't make a mistake if I go the easy way. This brings me to my next area of improvement
2) being more confident (#2 in the long and sprint)- I always think if I don't take the easy way I will become hopelessly lost and will have to walk back to the finish in shame.. :) being more confident in my faster and maybe trickier route choices will drop my times a bunch.
3) Reading the map while moving- I can't do it!! things just blur together so I have to walk or stop. With some practice I'll get it, that can save me time too.
4)***Important- Making sure I don't skip controls- I've honestly done this 4 times already and it's quite annoying. I need to really look at my map when controls are near each other or i'm moving faster like in a sprint. It really sucks (even if I don't run great) downloading and seeing a bunch of blanks and a MP on the top of my splits
Anyway I had a great time. I really loved the courses and the woods. Nice to see so many juniors too and have time to talk about what we did. Quite different racing against so many people that are mostly older and better than me :)