Orienteering race 54:08 [4] *** 5.0 km (10:50 / km) +120m 9:40 / km
spiked:12/9c shoes: Silva Pro Lite
Night-O at Little Bennet - this was such a fun event! My only regret is that I didn't run a longer course. I decided to take it easy on myself (after what I did to myself last weekend) and only ran the advanced short course, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more when I neared the end of my course. I only made one real mistake on my way to #3, which I think I can mostly attribute to a lack of confidence since it was the first leg of the course that (had I not made a mistake) my route choice involved no roads/trails. On my route I was supposed to cross a small, but not indistinct trail, which I never saw so rather than take a chance trying to find a point feature on the side of a rather bland hillside, I decided to just drop down till I hit a major trail that I knew I wouldn't miss and then took a bearing from there. It slowed me down and I was walking a lot because I was hesitant and also because the feature that I was looking for on the trail to attack the control from was about 20 ft off the trail as opposed to right on it - so I had to keep scanning the woods. But, I found what I was looking for (and earthbank on a very sharp bend in a stream) and found the control realatively easily, despite the massive fallen tree that was laying directly between me and the control when I spotted it (I'm not kidding it took me almost a min to get around the damn thing!) After that the rest of the race went pretty smoothly. On my way to #5 I was supposed to be running along the top of a hill line, but had drifted down the slope a bit - I knew this though and knew to keep scanning to my right and just contoured from where I was and still found the control fine, even from about 30 ft away. Also on my way to #7 I wasn't able to find the point on a trail that I wanted to attack the control from, so ran a bit further up the trail to attack, but still hit the control head on.
I was most pleasantly surprised with how much speed I was able to maintain through the woods, even in the dark with my not-the-greatest LED headlamp and only a little flashlight for a spotlight. There were definetly points at which I think I was running nearly as fast as I would during the daytime. Granted these woods are pretty wide open, but there are fallen trees and rootstocks everywhere so you still need to keep you eye on the ground! Definitely a really fun time! I only wish that we had more night-o's put on!
