Orienteering race 1:55:40 [5] ***** 7.0 km (16:31 / km) +225m 14:14 / km
14c shoes: Silva Pro Lite
West Point A-Meet - Classic Disance. Well, I had had hopes of redeeming myself today for Saturday's sloppy races, but I am unhappy to report that this race was my worst performance of the weekend. Training wise, I seemed to either nail everything I intended to do on a leg, or I completly blew it all. Overall, I had more clean legs than poor ones, but when I did make a mistake, it was a big one. Again, I planned to work on the same skills as Saturday. My first control was OK, I hesistated, especially at the start, but managed to run a fairly clean leg. Control #2 was by far my best leg of the race, and then we get to #3. I did just about every thing you are not supposed to do on my way to control number three. I picked a weak attack point, but changed my mind half way through my leg and used a cliff as my attack point which may or may not have been the cliff that I thought it was on the map. It didn't take long before I started to lose confidence and realized that I definetly was not where I thought I was. I found several other controls out in the woods that were not mine and tried to relocate off of them, but had no success. Fortunately I eventually was able to relocate off of the 3rd control I found out there that was not mine, but by my estimation, I lost at least 15 min on that leg. Controls 4,5, and 6 went well, but I really slowed down so that I didn't repeat 3 and because the fog was actually getting worse so my visibility was greatly diminishing. Since control 7 was mostly a trail run clear across the map, I was able to collect my head and only bobbled slightly within the control circle. However, on my way to number 9, I started to get intense pain in my right knee with shooting pains down the outside of my calf - I literally could not run the pain was so bad. Walking was fine since I didn't need to bend my knees past 90 degrees, but running was definetly out. It was so frustrating too because the woods finally opened up and were less rocky, but I just could not run. My guess is that all of the running that I did through the low bushed from 6-9 aggrivated my IT band which caused the pain, hopefully that is it :(
Overall, I was really unhappy with my finishing time. Had I not made such a huge error at number 3 and been able to run the entire second half of the course I probably could have shaved a good 30 min off my time.