orienteering race 2:38:09 [3] *** 18.35 km (8:37 / km) +488m 7:37 / km
spiked:22/24c shoes: Inov-8 Oroc 280 #1 (blue)
Blue Hills Traverse, 14.2 km, 13th place. Pretty good run for most of it, with a rough stretch near the end, which didn't make much difference on terms of places. I was with Tim and a guy in a red shirt for much of the first map (through control #7), then the redshirt seems to have gotten dropped in the butterfly (7 - 13). Off by myself, then met up with Tim again at #15, and we encountered Kseniya at #17. We missed #19 slightly, a bit high and too far, and Kseniya got ahead, followed by Tim. Michael Hughes caught up, and though K and T did the smart thing and went down to the trail, Michael and I took the stupid contouring route. Just after reach the ledges and cedars, I slipped on some wet rock, doing what probably looked like a flip from some angle, and managed to not brain myself on any of the pointy granite or break anything, just some minor scrapes and bruises. Did spike the control, but then I got low on the next short leg (hard to read the 1:15000 contours), and Michael got ahead while I was climbing up. The rest went fine, and I was gradually closing in on him, but didn't quite catch up.
Nice course: as I noted to Jeff, it went through mostly clean woods, had a few very nice legs, and it didn't go to the place we always go or the place I hate.
The ride over was interesting: I caught a lift with three adventure racers, and though I was a little puzzled when we didn't get off the highway whre I expected, the driver was quite confdent, because he knew we needed to go to Granite Ave. At first I thought that meant we were starting at the auto auction place up behind the quarry, but then he kept going until getting off at Granite Ave in Boston. No, wrong place, we backtracked and got there at about the ideal time. They noted that they might not finish, but the woman in the group commented that she knows the Blue Hills well, and in case of dificulty "could always find the mountain bike trail". Umm... yeah. I hope they had a good time.