Orienteering long 1:28:18 [5] **** 8.7 km (10:09 / km) +150m 9:21 / km
spiked:13/18c shoes: VJ Integrator
NAOC Long - so after Saturday's race I made the goal for myself that I would go for a repeat orienteering performance. I wanted to be clean above all, even at the sacrifice of speed, but I still hoped to keep the same steady pace of Saturday too. One thing I have been working on quite a lot in the past few months is dealing with something that used to give me a lot of trouble...pressure. So far I have been really pleased with how I have been handling it and today's race was no exception. I went out a bit nervous, but managed to get most of my nerves under control once I was on my way to #2. I had a good start to my race and didn't run into any trouble until #4 when I was a bit too far north of the control and hit another control, wasn't quite sure whether the control I found was in a depression or reentrant (both features were nearby my control), but I was pretty sure I was high so I just dropped down found it pretty quickly. I was a bit hesitant to #5 then too. I was on the right line, but I stopped short and a tree was exactly obscuring my view of the control so wasted a couple seconds there just staring at my map. No problems until my route to #11,, was the longest leg of the course so was slow going through the woods and then tried to make time up on the trail which resulted in me almost turning down the wrong trail and the having to stop and scratch my head for about half min to figure out where exactly I was, but found the control fine once I left the trail at the right point. I got a bit off my bearing on my way to #12, but found the control fine and then bobbled #13 when I was a bit too far right and the woods were really junky there so it was tough to get to the control. On my way to #14 I couldn't help myself from checking a control code I passed on a control that was hung on the same feature as my control (even though I knew I hadn't quite gone far enough). #16 was my biggest mistake at 2 min of error, I'm not entirely sure of where exactly I went, but I think I got sucked into the wrong reentrant and the mistook the swamp I was in for the one the was right before my control (in my own opinion the last little bit of woods before the finish was some of the trickiest terrain of the whole weekend.) Overall, another great race with another respectable finish (4th for the US women and 8th overall.) A number of minor errors, but the terrain was tricky to navigate at points. I was able to keep up a steady pace as well as keep my head together for the whole race too - so I'm making progress.
Overall, a fantastic weekend filled with great friends and great orienteering! Its weekends like these that make going back to work on Mondays so difficult...