Orienteering race 14:30 [5] 2.2 km (6:35 / km)
shoes: Adidas Yukon Trail
Webster Park Sprint. I felt pretty good about my run. No major bobbles, but a couple of less than optimum route choices. I finished 4th, getting beaten by Nate, Gil, and Rob H., all of whom are much better orienteers and runners than I am. So no shame in losing to that group! Also, I beat a few people who normally would be ahead of me at most orienteering events. So no serious complaints about my performance.
The route choices where I could have done better were going to #6, where I planned to do the shorter, more direct way through the woods but somehow overshot it and found myself near the trailhead, so I just took the trail back to the bend, costing some extra distance. So I guess this wasn't a route choice problem, but rather an execution problem. Then coming out of 6 going to 7, I took the trail again, without thinking about it too much -- I guess since I came in that way, it was more mindless to go back out that way. Again, I could have saved some distance by going through the woods. And then going to #7, I went up and then back down rather than staying low and taking the trail along the creek. I'm not really sure if that cost me a whole lot of time , but it certainly didn't seem like the optimum way to go.
Orienteering race 58:56 [3] 6.0 km (9:49 / km)
weight:171lbs shoes: Adidas Yukon Trail
Night Score-O at Webster Park. Really bad. I used to think I was pretty good at Score-O's, but I haven't been lately. I seem to manage to pick very poor strategies, and don't execute them very well. Then I typically change my mind about the strategy several times, leading to an even worse strategy. This event was similar but even worse because of the additional challenges of it being at night. I had a lot of trouble going back and forth between looking at the map and looking at the terrain. I think something that would help is making it more like a memory-O, where I look at the map and then remember what my next 4-5 turns etc. should be, but I found myself referring to the map way more often than that, with each glance at the map costing me a lot more time than it would during the day. I'll blame aging eyes (partly) on that.
I wound up with only 11 controls. On two others (the famous 122 and 106), I was at the center of the circle but no control in site. However, many others had the same issues with these controls and missed them also.