Orienteering race (Rogaine) 5:57:00 [4] *** 18.0 mi (19:50 / mi) +1115ft 18:44 / mi
weight:174.5lbs shoes: Asics Gel Kahana - screw shoes
CNYO 6-hour rogaine, at the Finger Lakes National Forest.
Teamed up with Dan Brown of Ithaca and Vince Cassano from ROC, at the last minute. I was entered with Anne Schwartz, but she hurt her ankle pretty badly doing the 25K trail run last week, and decided that she really shouldn't attempt the rogaine.
Dan and Vince and I got our team together two days before the rogaine, on Thursday. Dan had never met either one of us, and had never orienteered or rogained before, but he's a triathlete and serious backpacker, so he's in good shape. I only barely knew Vince, from talking to him a bit at local meets, and Vince had never done a rogaine before.
It turned out that both Dan and Vince took to rogaining very well; everyone contributed to the discussions around strategy, to navigating to the area of the control, and to finally hunting for the control once we were in the right general area.
We laid out what we thought was a workable strategy, heading north to take advantage of a lot of road and trail travel. But as things often go, we had to revise our plan downward a couple of times, as we realized we weren't making as fast of progress as we had hoped. Plus we had some major problems finding one control (#45); we did finally find it, but it didn't seem to be in the right place, plus the map didn't seem very good in that area. We probably lost 30 minutes, which certainly set us back.
We wound up with 13 controls and 680 points, finishing with 3 minutes to spare. We were pleased to find that we were the top overall finisher in the 6-hour category. So Dan's and Vince's intro to rogaining was a successful one.
Our route: 55 - 77 (didn't find, didn't spend too much time) - 52 - 73 - 66 - 33 - 49 - 69 (didn't seem right location but we found it and didn't lose too much time) - 45 (definitely not right location, found it but lost 30 minutes) - 82 - 59 - 72 - 32 - 54. Wanted to go for 46, 78, and 63, but we just didn't have enough time.
The mileage covered is fairly approximate, as I couldn't wear my Forerunner which I've come to depend on for mileage (no GPS allowed, of course).