My first "Goat" orienteering race, had a blast! Near-perfect running weather, scenic forest with excellent visibility but still a lot of nice colors on the trees, and feeling good for a lot of the run. New venue at Maybury was very fun too, and of course Igor always puts on a good course. The Goat run really felt like running like a goat, galloping over logs and climbing hills, but speedy!
Taught the Civil Air Patrol cadets about orienteering before the race. Wondering how they did.
Here's the QR, comments below it:
Here's how it went for me:
* forgot to start my GPS logging until on my way to #3
1- Pretty inefficient here as it took me a good minute or so to get my head into it. Alex and I were running pretty close.
2- Spike
3- Spike but got some snags that slowed me down
4- A little hesitation but used the tree as an AP and that took me right to it
5- coming off of 4 got a little messed up w/ the map contact but quickly corrected
6- Kinda slow, was still having some map reading issues here with thinking I was on the big trail, not the small trail to the south of big trail.
7- Spike
8- Spike
9- Just used the hill joining the trail as my AP then a simple contour from there, spike.
10- Spike but probably should have gone faster
11- Horse rider hollared out to me a bit obtusely (despite that I was nowhere near them), but still deviated east a bit to run farther behind their group...lots of people converging on 11, pretty easy once I saw the clearing, spike.
12- Got messed up a little coming off of 11 with the trails and map... for some reason I thought I made a mistake and started going south, but I was actually going the right way, then had some vegetation issues...probably my weakest leg of the whole course, really inefficient. Should have just popped back up to the paved trail to pick up speed. But it was at this leg that I realized my initial plan to skip #17 was probably not as good as skipping #14, so that helped make up for it a bit. Hill at #12 scared me so I liked the possibility of the little bit of white crossing the stream and then the shallower ascent around the hill and that worked out well, but the hill wasn't as big as I thought it was going to be because I didn't read the map carefully enough to see many of the contours were just half-contours.
13- Since the hill turned out not so bad I just ran the remaining top of the hill and then dumped down onto the paved path to 13, spike.
14- SKIP!! Just seemed to make more sense to head straight to 15.
15- Trail run and control visible from trail if you were looking and I was, yay! spike.
16- Spike
17- Decided to use the trail that took me south right to another trail passing beside a ditch and use that as my AP, and caught a glimpse of the control from the AP, spike.
18- Was worried I would miss if I went on a beeline so went to 11 as my AP and then up, a bit of fight that slowed me down, so spike but a slow spike.
19- Slow and a bit sloppy coming off of 18 but got it under control and hit the right trails thereafter...but more horses to deviate around a bit. spike.
20- Hmmm... went to the top of a hill, but turned out I went to the top of the wrong hill, looked west and saw the control sitting on top of the next hill over. Not good.
21- Spike but too slow
22- so-so, lots of hesitation and such.
F- spike
Oh yeah, lost my Brunton Spectra thumb compass so used a rental for this one...missing my compass!
My legs were thrashed by some pickers and tried out these O-pants they gave our Armed Forces team, but the pants are way too weak for some of those pickers and burrs, so will probably just use those for sprint races in the future. Front of thighs felt on fire from all the scratches, but I learned from Igor that "pain is good, it helps you". :)