Orienteering race 1:36:22 [4]
Day 2. US Classic Champs. Green Y. Bear Brook State Park, NH.
A bit of a disaster. I psyched myself out from the beginning. Peggy was ~ 4 minutes ahead of me and Barb was less than a minute in the overall results, so of course I started out very stupidly. I was running down the trail to #1 and I already was unsure of where I was on the trail!! Not even a minute into the race!! That alone should have taught me something, but it did not.
I found #1 okay after I saw the little trail off the big trail and knew where I was. But #2 was my downfall. Just like so many others, I could not make heads or tails of those yellow strips. I thought I was following them just fine, but when I got to the spot where my control should have been, it was not there. And then...where the hell am I?? Wondered around a lot, trying to match things up. I finally hit a yellow strip right at 2 boulders, forced myself to stop, line things up and find the spot on the map that looked like that. I knew I couldn't be too far away as I had just been wandering in concentric circles. I thought I found the spot, headed to where my control should have been, and there it was...looking nothing like I had pictured.
#3 was fine, started out on a 180 to #4 but caught myself fairly quickly, and then found it fine. Off a bit on #5, looked at #6 and thought, "oh shit." But...I went slow enough and thumbed along to everything and hit it dead on. #7 was great, a bit to the right on #8. Then I saw we were going back into the yellow strips to get to #9, and I was a little scared. But, for some reason, they made sense to me now. I think the elephant tracks down the middle of them helped, too.
I saw #9 from a ways away, got excited and started running to it when...WHAM...I stepped in an animal hole, went straight down, bending my knee way beyond what it's capable of doing. Immediate shooting, very painful pain occurred, along with some not so nice words. I felt bad about that because there was a very nice looking lady standing there (might have been Canadian as I didn't recognize her), and she asked if I was okay. I said I would be fine in a few minutes, and she said, "Well, maybe a few more curse words will help." Sorry!!
Ran out to the road from 9, thought briefly about taking the road to #10, but realized I wouldn't be moving much faster on the road than I had been through the woods, so stayed on a straight line to 10. Luckily, I passed another control between 2 very distinct boulders and used that as a semi-attackpoint. #11 was good, it just seemed to take forever to get there. Was a little stronger bashing out to the road to #12, remembering what it cost me yesterday, and in to the finish. Was able to hold onto third place only because others had more problems than I did.
Overall, a very enjoyable weekend. It was fun to travel with Peggy...we seem to agree on everything, which is nice. It was great to see old friends and have very nice conversations with them. Beautiful weather, challenging courses...yes, a very nice weekend.