Orienteering 1:35:43 [3] 11.16 km (8:35 / km) +256m 7:42 / km
19c shoes: 201304 Inov-8 Oroc 280s
OCIN Night-O Champs, Hueston Woods. Conditions were pretty grim - temperature below freezing, 2-3 inches of icy snow on the ground, and intermittent flurries late in my course. I previously visited this map for the ARDF champs in 2010 and found it muddy with very steep reentrants. A brutal climb out of a 10m reentrant en route to 2 reinforced that perception.
I found that even during the winter, the inadequately mapped vegetation was thick and impassable in many places. I changed routes after a little over a minute on the way to 9, and my road route turned out to be slow. I planned to go straight to 11, but when I tried to cross the power lines, I found an impenetrable wall of thistles, thorns, and green briar that forced me to back out and go around on a trail. I had a meltdown on 14 when I counted reentrants inaccurately and the trail proved too numerous to help.
While running on a trail to 17, I discovered the ground below me splintering as though I were running on an icy stream. I broke through a few times and discovered that under 1-2 inches of crumbly ice was a thick layer of liquid mud. I guess it doesn't go away, even in the winter.
I was happy to survive the course, but I did little else. Given how important the relay champs were, I wasn't attacking the course with my maximum effort, but I was outclassed today and defeated by the map and elements.