Orienteering race 52:50 [4] **** 5.6 km (9:26 / km) +220m 7:53 / km
shoes: New VJ Spikes
NEOC "middle."
One of the highest control densities I've seen - 25 CPs in under 6 K. All those controls and some crappy terrain made for slow times.
I took it hard out of the gate and was banging things out well through ~5 controls. Then, when I congratulated myself on my immaculate concentration, I saw Brendan, congratulated myself on catching up to him, and proceded to bomb the control. Then, trying to recover, and without much of a plan, screwed #8 (a hard control in an area where the contours are weird.) After than I slowed down a bit, but concentrated on "grinding" it out. Relatively clean after that.
When my watch rolled over 50 minutes, I determined I stunk up the woods and was pretty sure I had a poor performance. I was truly amazed to have won the day because it felt like a bad race given two seemingly badly hosed controls.
Orienteering race 14:21 [5] **** 2.1 km (6:50 / km) +80m 5:44 / km
shoes: New VJ Spikes
Sprint relay leg C. Started a bit after all the top teams. Ran into the cluster of controls at the start and realized I was well to the right of mine. After that I was pretty clean except for the penultimate control (although maybe one or two slightly bad routes.) Caught up to Andy Hall going to 2 and he was with me most the time.