Orienteering (Foot) 1:06:08 [4] 6.5 km (10:10 / km)
OCIN A-meet, Mt Airy Forest,, Cincinnati, OH: US Night-O Championships. I prefer running longer events even though my right calf has been ailing me, and this being a championship. I ran M45+ instead of M50+ because I thought it'd be fun. I went into this not knowing what to expect because of my lack of recent training and calf injury. The injury itself was probably due to being a weekend warrior--no training during the week, then racing on days off. About the only thing I had going for me was getting a new headlamp. I splurged on it. The light was bright but I didn't even use the full power. The nicest thing with it was that the headband worked without the light bouncing as in the past.
I got to the meet a bit late and missed my start by a minute. I had gone into the weekend calmly so the rushed start didn't frazzle me, The course was not technically difficult but it was physical. I expected to lose a minute taking the road around to #5 but figured it best to save energy and to save my calf. AP shows an error for me on #6 but I hit it right on--I just got hung-up on some deadfall and thorns. I got mixed-up going to #11; I'd initially planned to to around to the right and did on the trails but along the way I fixated on control #17. I cut left back through the field, went down, and up perfectly to #17. It wasn't that far out of the way. The last quarter of the race, my calf started bothering me. Going over a steep ridge probably did it in. I slowed down but hit everything pretty well including #17 which was causing others around me some problems. I got second place in my age group which was somewhat unexpected. :)