orienteering race 40:00 [3] *** 3.83 km (10:27 / km) +105m 9:11 / km
Disappointing that I skipped a control, but it's hard to feel too disappointed given that I had very low expectations. I did a lot of things right, and on most of it I felt calm and in control (always had a plan ahead of time, never changed my plan, never noticed that I wasn't where I thought I was...). So I guess my lack of frustration is just because I felt like it could've gone a lot worse. I just feel like skipping a control is something that SHOULD NOT HAPPEN and I should feel worse about it.
Analysis of skipped control:
Unfortunately, this is not as easy to fix as punching the wrong control. So I did a big long list of reasons I did it, but here I'm only listing the ones I can change:
1) I'd planned 5 (compass) legs ahead, so I could plan the long leg while I was on the trail to 7. Because I liked getting to the long leg after the control-picking and knowing exactly what to do, I don't want to change the number of controls I look ahead.
2) Instead, I could have been better at making sure I always knew exactly where I was on the map, and where I was going on the next leg; just because I've planned the next leg doesn't mean I've memorized it. So the primary problem, as I see it, is that I wasn't in close enough contact with the map.
3) The second-most-disturbing thing was that when I finished, I remembered 2 warning signs I'd noticed and ignored while I was making the mistake: it took me longer than it should have to get to the creek (I saw later it was 100m), and I was way farther to the left than I should have been after such a careful bearing (about 25-50m).
At the time, I ignored them because I could see the hill I was about to run up to 11; I felt secure, because I knew where I was going. In the future, I can only hope that having made such a big mistake when I was where I was about to go will keep me from having this false sense of security.
General observation:
I could notice that even after training for about 3 months solely with non-forest exercises, I felt like I could do the route choice, leg simplification, and reading ahead with a lot less conscious effort than before I got injured. This made me really happy, and I think it'll be enough motivation to make me carry maps with me between classes again. (because now I'm thinking maybe I do have a very slight chance of getting the kittens after all. Especially since I'm living at home next year.)