Orienteering race 1:52:24 [4] **** 6.0 km (18:44 / km) +300m 14:59 / km
spiked:6/8c shoes: La Sportiva Wildcat
Cuyahoga NP event. One of those days when everything that could go wrong did go wrong! Especially on #2. Even now I am still not sure why I was having so much trouble on that one. I got to #1 a bit sloppily, but I tried to go from #1 to #2 three times before I finally would up at #3, and backtracked to find #2. Words can't describe the raging frustration I was having with control #2. I don't even know how I ended up at #3. I don't know what was going wrong but it went very very badly and to even now I can't make sense of what I was seeing and how in the world I ended up at #3 the way I did. Anwyay, once I found 3 it was a cakewalk to find #2 and then go back to 3 and the rest of the course. Until I fell in deep mud that is, after which I looked down at my map and saw only a thick layer of slimy mud all over my map. Tried wiping it off but the damage was already done since I didn't have a plastic cover for it, just paper map itself. Made reading a lot of the rest of the course very difficult and at times impossible. Still I pressed on for several controls doing as best as I could and just trying to focus on doing well for all the non #2 controls. Had some decent runs to a few of them except for #8 which was way sloppy with a 180 degree error. With the hot sun beating down on me, a 3 pm cutoff coming soon, a wife and kiddo probably waiting for me, and a few obvious hints that this was *not* my day for orienteering, I made my way back to the finish after #8 skipping the remaining controls. Just one of those days where I didn't have it together and also learned how much more work I have to do. That all said it was my first time at Cuyahogo and a NEOOC course and I enjoyed the experience despite the O-snafoos of mine, and I look forward to coming back again in the future.
