Orienteering 1:14:28 [3] **** 3.5 km (21:17 / km) +361ft 18:23 / km
spiked:7/11c shoes: Montrail Mountain Masochist
Middle distance course at West Point.
I was put slightly off balance when I found out, in the starting area, that I was on Green Y, not on Green X (like I think the prelim. info had said). I had the Green X clue sheet in the holder on my arm, so I promptly stowed that in my pocket, to avoid confusion. No loose clue sheets were at the starting area, so I needed to unfold my map on a number of occasions to check the control description and code. No real major loss, just an annoyance.
I did acceptably (meaning slow, but no huge errors) on most controls, but made two big bobbles. One was on #4, which I could tell was going to be tough. It was a cliff, on a fairly steep hillside with probably 15 other cliffs, and no real obvious attack point. I went in hoping to find it (not a real good strategy), didn't, and finally made my way to the top of the hill (about 6 contours up from the control) to re-locate. Then I found it. Nearly 15 minutes on the control; I think others were doing it in 5 minutes or so.
The other blunder was on the second to last control, which was really a very easy on, unlike #4, but I took it too lightly. I've heard that the two controls to be the most cautious about are the first and the 2nd to last. The first for obvious reasons, the second to last because it's late in the race, you're tired, you're looking forward to being done, and you might tend to treat the rest of the course as a formality. I think that's what happened to me. I did 13 minutes on this control, which should have been done in around 3 minutes.
I was 13th out of 19 starters in M60. (Counting two people who started but MP.)
Orienteering 22:38 [5] *** 2.1 km (10:47 / km) +213ft 9:20 / km
max:160 spiked:9/15c shoes: New Balance 749 (trail)
Sprint at West Point.
I had two mistakes due to lack of focus, and one due to not reading the map as well as I should. The two lack-of-focus ones were going to the wrong control (skipping a control). That happened from 4 to 6 (I actually punched in at 6, then realized that the code was wrong, so went back to get 5, then re-punched at 6), and from 11 to 13 (started going to 13, didn't quite get there when I realized my mistake, and then got 12 and 13).
Poor map reading error was on #9, which is a cliff between two barracks. There are four barracks, parallel to each other, going up the side of a hill. The problem was, the 4th barrack was shown in outline, rather than filled in like a building would be. That is there nomenclature for a building that can be passed under (many of the barracks are on "stilts"). I didn't see it on the map. So it looked like the cliff was between the 2nd to last barrack, and the last barrack, which it was really one barrack lower.
A few other relatively minor bobbles, which are far less significant than the about 3 errors.
Finished 6th out of 10 in my age group.