Orienteering race 1:24:28 [4] 5.66 km (14:55 / km) +108m 13:37 / km
spiked:7/9c slept:7.5 shoes: Inov8 ORoc280-A 2013-08
Classic Day 1 at Georgia Navigator Cup. FDR State Park in Pine Mountain, 4.7 km / 145m climb nominal. Temps in low 70s (we had later starts)!
Because I haven't been doing much O-specific training I was happy to see the climbs minimized though there was still plenty for us. Tired after about 65 minutes, so I'm not sure how much energy I'll have tomorrow. A couple of falls but the woods' surface had plenty of duff so no hard falls. I managed to find probably the only piece of barbed wire out there, still mostly attached to a tree, which tripped me up but no other damage.
First control was a pit in bland woods, and of course the flag was barely visible from the surface so you had to be right on it. Shallow ditches nearby weren't mapped at all but you could kind of judge by distance from trails and from where the hill kicked up. Contours were somewhat generalized, which I learned early on; information that was helpful through the course. My only big mistake was on the long leg, 5-6, where I read the gully/stream as uncrossable as it looked gray to me (though it was apparently a stream mapped with narrow solid brown walls). I didn't find the step down/up to be all that noticeable that it deserved this depiction (which I'm not sure is ISOM) and would have been happier if they'd chosen either the stream *or* the gully symbol. I avoided going straight because of it, and apparently didn't notice how far off I had gone until I hit the hillside with lots of rootstocks south of the control, probably a good 200m off. Once I realized that's where I was it was an easy fix. Probably lost at least five minutes, and maybe more, being so far off line.
From 6-7 (control was a rootstock) I slowed down to check the code at another flagged rootstock but figured out it was the one about halfway there and kept trudging.
Lots of fellows ahead of me (the fastest time was over 56 minutes, TomN*), but only two women*, both at about 70 minutes. That surprised me because I was going extremely slowly out there--my run-in across the field illustrates my fitness level... Guess I stayed on course okay.
*When I last looked at results. Apparently there were one or two other women finishing later.