Orienteering (Foot) 1:21:54 [4] *** 7.7 km (10:38 / km) +327m 8:46 / km
spiked:12/18c slept:6.75
QOC: Hemlock Overlook Park, VA. The advanced courses only went up to Red but as course setter Andy Britton explained, there was a lot of climb (+300m) to make up for it. I suppose the bicycling I'd done this summer, sporadic as it was, had helped me climb the hills because I really hadn't been doing enough training lately for it to help much. I started pretty well, spiking the first 5 controls. The leaves were all still on an green so this was good. As often happens in starts like this, I fumbled on #6 about 21 minutes in. Slowing down would have probably helped but I'd just passed Jon Pifer at #5 and I wanted to stay ahead.
I messed-up on #7 too but seemed to pass Jan Merka on that leg. My route to #8 was fine but I got distracted by an unmapped root stock near a reentrant that seemed like the same situation. It got worse on my route to #10 when still trying to run away from others, I stayed high for faster terraing and mistakenly went to #7 before going to #10. I settled down for the next 3 controls hitting them well.
I caught Jon Pifer again at #13, and got ahead taking a more direct line to the left. He was close behind me on the trail along the river and I think I got to the reentrant for #14 first. However, I was just too slow on the last climb choosing to stay on the left side of it rather than in the middle. Jon took a direct line toward #15. I started going around on the right. I saw him once more before I ended up more to the right than I'd planned. Eventually, I ran to the lake and was too flustered to read the map correctly--I missed seeing that a trail would have taken me to #15 from there. I was slowing down a lot on the climb to #16. About to pass the control location, I stopped and looked left to see it.
I'm sure everyone who went to #17 has a story to tell. It was a steep sometimes dangerous descent. It didn't help that the mapping was poor and the stream missing. I picked my way down at walking speed, went to the low side of the low rock, then back up. The climb out was really slow. I paced my walk up so as not to tire too much. I took the trail and field to #18. My line to the finish was good except that at the end, I stopped reading the map and went to the start/registration area like most others did.
I enjoyed running but found the hills late in the course to be less than desireable. I was glad that I was able to run all but the steepest parts and once again did not injure myself.
Orienteering (Control Pickup) 38:28 [3] 2.16 mi (17:49 / mi) +118m 15:14 / mi
spiked:4/5c
Hemlock Overlook Park, VA. The support crew looked thin so I picked-up controls #109, #108, #107, #104, and #103 which were the ones farthest south and east. Fortunately I was able to pickup these before the courses were officially closed. I only missed slightly going to #104 by being one over amongst 3 closely spaced but deep reentrants. I felt funny going to #107 for the 3rd time of the day. I took splits both getting to controls and leaving them so that I'd have an idea of how long the untying and wrapping took. It was about 3:30 out of the total.
It turned out that with control pickup and the detour around the Clifton Days festival, we were about two minutes too late getting to a running store when Peggy wanted to redeem her gift certificate (won the the EX2 Bushwacker race a few weeks back).