orienteering3:02:52 5.54 mi (33:00 / mi) +146m30:31 / mi ahr:124 max:157
One of Greg's courses at Mocanaqua. 5.4km 2:47:41 on the course (sort of) plus the walk to start and back from finish.
I say sort of because I went to all the controls but not in order.
I was good from 1 through 10. I was taking my time, using trails a lot, but enjoying things for the most part. 10-11 was a long trail run (walk) and I lost concentration and went to 12 instead of 11. I was still feeling reasonably good though so when I heard the wrong control chime, I realized what I had done, went to 11 and back to 12. They were less than 100 meters apart so no big deal. 13-14-15 went okay but the exit out of 15 left me confused. It turned out my guess as to where I was and what I needed to do was correct, but the control was in a pretty bland area so I took the time to go around and attack from somewhere I was more sure of. I was getting pretty beat by this time and thought about skipping 17-18-19 since 20 was back close to where I was at 16. But I decided to go for it. But I was tired enough that I saw the loop in the wrong direction and went to 19 first. When the wrong control sound played I was really bummed to realize what I had done. Again. I went to 18 then had trouble with 17. It was a very vague spur and while I was in the right place I wasn't quite far enough down the spur for UsynligO . The loop involved a lot of bashing through thigh high blueberry and at that point I was mentally done. I sat down, changed it to score-O, and asked for a hint. I got 17, then slogged my way to 20, 21 and the Finish.
I can't say I'm a fan of Mocanaqua. There are a lot of really cool features but the woods are general trashy and the prickers are already out in force. It was good to be orienteering for the second day in a row, but it wasn't as much fun as yesterday.
orienteering2:15:09 4.57 mi (29:34 / mi) +205m25:57 / mi ahr:126 max:176
I closed on my new house in the Poconos yesterday. Unfortunately, the woman that I bought it from won't be out until Tuesday at 5pm. We signed an after settlement addendum and I already have keys to the house and so on, but she still has tons of stuff that hasn't been moved out yet. Almost all the furniture is gone - it's just lots and lots of small stuff. It seems to be the daughter's fault; she was supposed to come out from California to help her mom move and she kept putting it off. Then on Wednesday - three days ago - the daughter tried to move the closing to two weeks from now. We said no way and this was the compromise. It's been a bit stressful trying to figure it all out.
My original plan had been to stay in the new house this weekend since there are showings scheduled for my Philadelphia house all weekend. I couldn't do that but I decided to just stay in a hotel for the weekend up here anyway. And I had planned to go orienteering if the weather was nice and today was great. So I drove the twenty minutes to Haystack and did a course I put on UsynligO a few days ago. I modeled it a bit on one that Greg ran there recently and saw some new sections of the park.
The course was really physical - steep, lots of rock and/or blueberry - but nothing has leafed out up here yet so visibility was great and I navigated well. I'm a bit rusty - I misread ups for downs a couple of times when I looked ahead on the map but figured it out as soon as I got there. Wasn't moving particularly fast but I did keep moving so a great workout.
Time on course: 1:38:47. The rest of the time was the walk to start and back from finish.
It's exciting to think I'll be able to do this without the really long drives.