Mt. Tom post-Thanksgiving Score-O (Western Mass Rules). For some reason I decided to go for all 18 controls this year (guess I'm a glutton for punishment). :-) Distance measured along beelines on my route (8-15-18-17-14-16-13-12-11-7-6-10-9-5-4-3-2-1). Glen counted the climb (he happened to do the exact same route as me though we did not confer ahead of time).
Unlike my past several O outings, I had a number of errors on this map, some of them due to my misinterpretation of the map or coming up short (again!) on distance.
On my way from 15-18 (see map below) I read the rock around the form-line knoll SW of the spur/cliffs as the spur/cliffs and attacked. Spent too much time bopping around unmapped rock before returning to the knoll. There was a young man running by at the time and I followed him NE where I saw the mapped cliffs and was able to continue from there. Lost 6 minutes there.
Another 4:30 was lost near 16 where I was too high on the hill and never saw where the reentrant bent towards the control. Stood some time at the NW end of the hill NW of the control before figuring out where I was.
The other biggie was misreading the big trail between 6 and 10 and leaving it too early. I got caught up in the green; misread the small trail, and ended up spending a lot of time catching up. 5:30 lost there.
Between 2-3 minutes was lost on my remaining errors; too high on the hill #15, and too far north on #3.
Otherwise I did my best to keep in contact especially on the controls north of the main road. I went there first because it was more physical and technical than controls 1-11.
TC - 7.9 km / ST - 10.7 Actual? Your guess is as good as mine.