Orienteering race (Night-O) 1:57:02 [3] **** 7.43 km (15:45 / km) +265m 13:22 / km
spiked:6/12c slept:6.5 weight:169lbs
Prince William Forest National Park, VA. QOC held a Night-O meet in conjunction with the Boy Scouts. The scouts ran all over the place earlier in the daytime and exhausted the understaffed meet director, Jim Chaplin. It was a bit chilly waiting to start (low 40's F) but fine on the run with just a long sleeve O-top. I hadn't run night-O in Prince William before. The courses (Y, O, B, G, R) were set for daytime use and are the same as will be offered tommorow. I ran Red which went through significant downfall and had some physically and technically challenging legs.
Things went sour early. My navigation to the first control was fine except for within the circle. I found the control soon but we were supposed to be e-punching and there was no e-punch box. Going to the second control, I took the long safe way around, attacked from a road bend and didn't find the control. Ted Good was wandering around in the same place. Independently, we came in again from a nearby road intersection and came to the same place so we concluded the control was missing. It turned out that others had found it earlier, a bit further down the reentrant than mapped. I'm not sure if both Ted and I were terribly wrong, the control was mishung or if it had fallen. They'll check it later (The next day Dave Onkst, who'd beaten me and Ted soundly and for more than just control #2 told me it was mishung. They'd checked it and found it low in the next reentrant about 100m away from where it should have been). For now it counts as a mispunch. Going on, I ran well aproaching the next control circle, then went up instead of down a ridge to be safe when it was down. I chased Ted Good to the next control and finally had a succession of e-punch controls for a split. On the next control, I missed by going too low and Ted got ahead. I made a bad +10 min. parallel error going to #6 by not paying careful attention to how I left #5. We were warned in advance not to go to control #9 since it didn't have an e-punch or night reflector. Eventually I caught Ted again at #10 and did better finishing up the rest of the course. It was fun doing some tougher navigation in the dark but I wished I'd not lost so much time on #2 and #6.
