Orienteering33:15*** 5.78 km (5:45 / km) +65m5:27 / km ahr:162 max:174 spiked:14/21c shoes: Saucony Koa ST
First forest session in a while at NH, bit of a struggle at times and pretty slow but I think it went pretty well for what it was.
Physically, I was pretty slow and the hills both up and down were a little slow with my quads being tired from all the biking. Definitely felt like I was landing harder than usual at times.
1 - pretty straight forward just following the trail 2 - A combination of print quality, wind in my eyes, and my eyes not being used to map reading recently led to making a parrel error that could have easily been avoided if I could have seen the contours better. The bearing wasn't too good either but I probably dragged myself of it a bit going to where I thought the control was. 3 - Pretty easy just running to the group of trees and around to the left. Veg was a little scuffed by the control so I wasn't 100% sure I was in the right place but used the contours to verify. 4 - good 5 - With how I printed the map it was basically impossible to see contours on dark yellow so the hills to my right kinda concerned me, but just trusted my bearing and the contours to my left. This was also the wettest part of the course, if I didn't have a map bag my map would have been ruined. 6 - Accidentally went perfectly straight on this one since the hill I was looking for was covered by the line and I thought I was further left than I was. Messed up in the circle a little bit but pretty minor 7 - Didn't check off the bush by the path even though I ran right by it. Probably would have messed this control up and would have needed to relocate off the bend in the trail if I didn't know this control location so well. 8 - Another parrel error, veg looked as dense as what I was looking for and was as similar to the actual location as possible. 9 - Noticed I didn't go to 8 pretty quickly and had to cut further right than I anticipated but the only real issue with this is that I went a bit further and could have taken a more direct route if I started from 8. 10 - Again with the contours being practically invisible this would have been a little bit of a challenge if I didn't remember this control location from planning it yesterday. Slowed down when I saw the huge clearing to my left that I wasn't anticipating for some reason. 11 - Perfect execution, the only issue was that the "cliff" I thought I placed it on was actually a tiny part of a trail. Caused a bit of confusion but I just decided to move on. 12 - Good, but didn't go as straight from the path to the knoll as I would have wanted and had to circle back a little. 13 - easy, mostly just trail 14 - easy, just running across an open field to a tree you could spot a mile away 15 - pretty solid, noticed I was going to far left with the help of the three inline bushed and recentered myself. 16 - Went to an unmapped boulder. should have checked my bearing more just as I was leaving the trail and should have noticed the two bushed I was going to check off were not there. 17 - good 18 - good 19 - left foot was starting to hurt from running on the same side hill so a little slow down mid-leg. used the bend in the trail but couldn't see any knoll so continued on. 20 - confused an erosion gully for an indistinct path and was off from the cup depression a little bit but relocated and got it. 21 - good.
Overall, need to focus on reading ahead, trusting and setting solid bearings, reading more detail.