Orienteering race 1:33:30 [4] 7.79 km (12:00 / km)
BFLO Score-O at Chestnut Ridge.
So, after the Sprint, spent some time chatting and recovering and finally they called folks to the start, just before noon, to hand out maps (except to those that already had them for some reason). Well, since many of the maps had been commandeered for the training, there were nowhere near enough for the 30+ competitors in the Score-O. Why was this just being discovered now? We had plenty of time to copy new maps after the Sprint. The meet director made two trips to his car to scrounge up enough maps for people to copy the course and delayed the start by 30 minutes. This was not acceptable, since I was planning on returning to Webster in time for some of my team's meet, but we were permitted to start a few minutes early to save some time. The downside of the separate start was that there was no mention of the scoring system, and I am too used to ROC's standard 1 control = 1 pt. Also, I was unaware that there were any clue sheets (I thought I was just SOL since I did not have the correct map) which made some of the controls a little harder to find.
I'll have to post my route later when I have my map, but I started out in the counter-clockwise direction, with the hope of getting almost all of the controls in 90 minutes. I was well on my way with 14 of 25 complete in under 45 minutes and I had to make a decision whether to go all the way south. I decided to go for it and it was all over. I ran along the southern trail, pace counting carefully from the final inflection point before C13 and dropped down shortly before the reentrant where I expected the control, but it was not there (but Mike Lance was). I "knew" I could not have overshot (I intentionally erred on the short side), so I searched the next couple of reentrants with no luck. Eventually I gave up and decided to move on to C14, but I missed that as well. And the wheels were off.
I got C24 (I think) and then thought I could run around the ravine to C23, but the area where I thought there was a trail leading around was marked OB, so I turned around and got some other controls, including C15 where I wasted a great deal of time following the crappy stream, instead of staying high. By the time that I was headed to C12, I was down to 7 minutes and was in no mood to run hard, so I coasted back. I was going to be almost 3 minutes late, so I decided to grab C1, thinking that worst case, it would be break-even, but because of the scoring, I lost even more points. When I find out what the scoring was, I may discover that I scored negative points in the last 45 minutes.
The day was capped off when, after driving "quickly" back to Webster, I arrived just in time for the "mixed" racewalk, an event that is best eliminated from every track meet, but should certainly not include boys (the one boy in the race clearly cheated in his lunge for the line to edge out Steve's daughter - I do feel sorry for his parents, and wonder what coach would allow him to enter the event) and found out that nate and AJ were both injured and unable to compete in the 4x800.