orienteer race 1:35:59 [4] *** 5.72 km (16:48 / km)
ahr:165 11c
Day two at West Point. I wanted to have a good clean O run, since this was my one day of running against strong competition this spring.
I blew it right from the start. Missed 1 (found the red course 1 instead) and wandered from boulder to boulder for a few minutes. Finally talked to myself, went back to a known location, stood still, looked at the map and moved forward. Lost about 5 minutes here.
Finally found the control, and punched at the same time as another woman. (Didn't know her at the time, but it was Dagmar Merkova. Nice to meet you Dagmar!) We were together, off and on, from 1 through 9. Sometimes we took wildly different routes, only to end up together again :)
Bonehead move of the day on 3: I was approaching the hill on the west side, about to climb up and punch, when I saw a control on another hill off to my left. Stupidly ran there, saw the wrong code, and ran right back to where I had been (as Dagmar was punching in). Fortunately lost only a minute or so.
(Did anyone else think the map was a bit sketchy around 4? I went through this area very slowly because a lot of things didn't make sense. Or was that just me?)
Tried to calm down and stay steady the rest of the course, but I just wasn't moving with any confidence.
Thought too much about getting away from Dagmar on the way to 7, and thus took a stupid route straight ahead. Except I drifted right, and ended up in the next reentrant over. Had to get through a lot of mountain laurel and then around the edge of the marsh, to reach the control. Lost another 5 minutes here (and was quite surprised to see Dagmar just leaving the control).
Took awhile to find number 9 because I wasn't reading the map at all, and didn't realize for a few minutes that I needed to climb higher. Lost about three minutes here.
I was tired at the end. Couldn't manage my usual sprint finish, although I did my best. Almost beat Mike on the run in; I'll get him someday :)
Overall, I was disappointed in my orienteering. Consistency 19.8, time lost 16.3
Highlights: nice temp for running, good courses, meeting new people, talking with Val, Susie, Kris and Janet, and getting a glimpse of Gail. Major bummer to not have even _seen_ Tom or Lisa.