Women's long course at the Team Trials. 8.1 km, 340m.
Course.
I think the executive summary of the day would be that things improved noticeably after about 10:15 am. Which just happens to coincide with the time I finished the course.
I am no longer able to do any sort of justice to a course like this. That's just the simple truth. Can't deal with the rocks, or the laurel, or the blueberry-filled "white" forest, or the hills. Fell down a lot of times. Walked a whole lot. Got very tired. And I suppose it could have been a lot worse, since I did spike most of the controls. But it was still pretty feeble.
On the plus side, it should move me closer to being able to take part in the new OUSA program -- which hopefully will be up and running by then -- to offer to ancient and decrepit male orienteers the shadowing services of cute young female orienteers, just to make sure the organizers don't have to launch search operations when we don't come back. Such a service could even be a team fundraiser....
Injury report:
-- weirdly sprained left ankle, rolled it during the middle on Saturday morning, some sharp pains but zero swelling or discoloration, ran a little gingerly on Sunday.
-- lost a lot of skin and a little flesh off my right thumb (kept having to wipe the blood off the map case so I could see the map). This will heal, but may be a bit unpleasant during possible biking or rogaine practice the next few days.
-- the heels are still sore, but not significantly worse.
-- mentally appalled.
My navigating was mostly adequate but no more. Got helped into #1 by Kris. My route to 5 is absurd, mostly because it was only at the last moment that I realized I was heading to 7. And the last part of 15, on which leg I was trying to see how accurate I could be on the first part just going due north, at the end my map reading was terrible, didn't place myself correctly crossing the stream and trail. No big deal, corrected OK, but I thought I was better than that.
My
routes.