Orienteering race 1:20:37 [4] 10.7 km (7:32 / km)
Billygoat - spent most of the race very close behind feet, though he overstates things slightly since he often opened the gap up to slightly beyond my range of vision in less runnable parts of the terrain. However, I believe I punched ahead of him at barely hrair (or fewer) controls - 1 through 3, 9 and, IIRC, 10 (though 10 was essentially simultaneous) - so the essential story of my following him around the bulk of the course like a remora is undisputed. I followed along on the map modestly well on a slight majority of legs but not to the point of maintaining adequate map contact on the legs to 20 and 21 where doing so theoretically might have enabled me to sneak by him (just him or him and Erik, respectively) as he made errors. "Theoretically" since I believe I would likely still have been run down even that late in the course - staying in contact with him/them in that terrain had me pretty much at the limit of my physical ability and I clearly would not have been able to go that fast if I'd been doing the heavy or at times any navigational lifting. Couldn't keep up with either of them over the last two controls and the finish sprint but at least managed to see a male win a Billygoat for the first time as I sprinted in for third. Then spent several minutes coughing uncontrollably and feeling slightly nauseous - may have to be nicer to myself over the next week lest I fail to fully kick whatever respiratory tract infection I have before flying to Calgary.
Fell full length hard once running downhill along the ride leaving 8 and heading towards the water stop, had a good shot at running my right eye at speed into the end of a branch (some skin on the lower part of the eye socket got scraped away) approaching 12 and fell again hard midway through the leg to 20, essentially doing an abortive attempted headstand, though most of my weight fell on my left shoulder, in a pile of deadfall. All told, I feel lucky to apparently not be seriously damaged in any way.