Orienteering race (Long) 2:28:14 [4] **** 18.66 km (7:57 / km) +610m 6:50 / km
spiked:23/26c slept:3.0
US Long Championships.
Here my goals were not quite so lofty. Based on my racing and training so far this spring, I figured I could reasonably expect to be able to race for 90+ minutes, maybe 100 at the outside. But I didn't think the winner for this course would be anywhere under 130 minutes, so I knew today would be just too long for me. No worries though - this is pretty much the only long orienteering race I am intending to do this year - for anything else, 100 minutes of racing should be enough....
So the goal was to keep up a full pace for as long as possible, and then do some damage control at the end. I knew I would likely crack at some point with this strategy, but realistically it seemed to better training to race it as if it was a 12-15 km (100 min) race, since if I am entered in the WOC long that's more likely to be the running time.
Sadly, I didn't manage to follow my race plan - I stayed up most of the night watching Tiomila and as a result only slept 3 hours. I actually overslept, and barely made it to the start - and certainly didn't do my full pre-race routine.
Things still started pretty decently, but misfortune shone on me for the infamous third leg, which for some crazy reason took us along an unmapped area at the edge of the map. All well and good for those who recognized this and chose to avoid the area. Very bad for those who went into this area - for even though it was along the direct line and was a valid route choice for an aggressive navigator, it was very terribly base-mapped with greener vegetation than advertised and a multitude of logging trails that, in such a diffuse area, made it extremely difficult to relocate once lost. All fine and dandy - although they might have told us a little more about it at the start, rather than words to the effect that we wouldn't be disqualified if we went into there. To make matters worse, my map is the one Vlad was mentioning on the discussion thread - on mine, it does not say "Area Not Field Checked" - rather, it just has a bunch of brown dots and curves, which at race pace look pretty much like contour features.
Sooooooo - I managed to find myself in an unmapped area of the map, without even knowing or intending to get into such an area. And it really is pretty bad in there. I lost contact completely (even the contours were wrong), and basically opted to bail out towards the control, after spending some time trying to figure out just what had happened and why the trails and contours were not at all matching what I had on my map. Bottom line - lost six minutes on that leg, and was very nearly caught up by Eddie at the control. Luckily I sneaked out as he was coming in and made a different route choice on the next long leg and ran clear of him.
After that, thinks went pretty smoothly and I was able to recover. Raced well right through 90 minutes, and only really started to get tired around 105 minutes. Patrick caught me by 4 minutes soon thereafter, and slowly pulled away. Eddie (the eventual winner) caught me as I was leaving the 20th control, about 2 hours (14km) into the race, and from that point on in it became a bit of a sufferfest, with both hamstrings starting to cramp up. Dropped a further 4 minutes to Patrick and Eddie over the last 4 km of the course, and ended up about 10 minutes back of the lead.
All in all, except for the 6 minutes lost on #3, I dropped only about 30 seconds the whole rest of the course. I actually surprised myself at how long I could maintain a high intensity (maintained the winner's pace up until the 105-minute mark), and although it was a painful struggle at the end I still continued basically mistake-free. Although I only ended up in 7th, I did meet my goals for the day and I guess I should be happy about that.
The incident on #3 left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth - why an unmapped area was even included on the map, let alone having courses set such that many runners would actually enter that area, is totally beyond me. I wouldn't consider that acceptable even for a regular A-meet, never mind a national championships. But it wasn't my national championships so there was no point to complain. If not for that error things might have gone on a bit differently, but hey - that's orienteering. At least now I know that I can race for 100+ minutes on hilly, tough terrain.