Orienteering race (sprint) 22:27 [5] *** 2.1 km (10:41 / km)
spiked:20/21c shoes: VJ Falcon - size 6
Fun sprint (course 2) at Hopewell Rocks, Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick. I'd been looking forward to this event since we decided to go to the COCs, and it didn't disappoint me. :-) The pillars of rock like that shown on their event logo were mapped to scale, along with the cliff lines at the edge of the land, and rocky outcrops covered in rockweed, a type of seaweed. The course 2 sprint took us ~ 1 km along the beach from the start with 12 controls, and then back to the starting location, visiting 9 more control sites along the way. We had 2 maps back to back in our map cases and flipped the map over at the turn-around.
It was a blast!
I had an error after the turn-around, misreading openings between rock pillars and going ~100 across a cove and having to run about that distance back to the other side of the cove where my control (13) was; about 1:25 lost covering the distance. Otherwise, I was slow to 15 (comparing split times) but attribute that to having to walk to catch my breath because I had no trouble finding the control (~10 sec). So with a clear run, I could have been about 1:35 faster, almost even with the 1st place runner, Anke Ritter of Ottawa. Finished 3rd of 12 in the 45-54 age group (55-64 ran a different, slightly shorter, course).
After the course closed but before the tide returned and they collected all the controls, we went back on the beach with our map and checked out (and photographed) some of the more interesting formations, including a cave where one of the controls had been placed.
Great job, ONB!!