Orienteering 36:23 [4] 4.59 km (7:56 / km)
US Relay Champs first leg for four point teams - ran as part of an unofficial team with Sergei Preobrazhensky, Dylan Thies and Eric Bone. Always fun to do a mass start and I clearly still need to work on not letting them make me error prone. I punched the first control first but overshot 2 slightly to the left and found myself in the middle of the lead pack. So I made a solitary but very good decision to take a low route around the the right to a trail heading towards 3, getting ahead of everyone even though I overshot the control and had to come back up two or three contours, having somehow convinced myself the slope wasn't continously downhill and that the control would be on a cliff in a reentrant after I turned uphill again rather than on a cliff on the downhill side of a small spur midslope. Forbore to fully explain what I was doing to the hiker who asked me if I was lost on the short leg to 4. Got caught up by Michael Sandstrom in the first two thirds of the long run to five, then conspired with him to get trapped on the opposite side of the large area of thick vegetation from the control - I initially thought what I've concluded was the medium green area was in fact the zone of green slash just downslope so my plan was to thread between that and the solid green. Ended up going largely through and then all the way around the end of the first patch of solid green to thread between it and the next patch and arrive at the control just behind a small pack led by Greg Balter. Took the next two controls to run through them and then started the uphill leg to 8 just behind Michael. We pulled away from the pack on the climb but I was worried about making another error and letting them catch us again, particularly if neither Michael nor I navigated carefully, so I aimed off somewhat left of Michael's course to be sure I'd be north of the control when I reached the flattening of the slope at the level of the control. Which worked and I got there just ahead of Michael with no one else in evidence. Took off up to the top of the hill and over with Michael presumably just behind, not that I was looking back. We came out of the woods and through the spectator control within a step or two of each other and stayed almost that close throughout the last loop of variegated rough open, woods and thickets, which was rather tricky at that speed racing someone head to head. Finished, I think, only a couple of steps ahead of him. Too bad about our error on 5 - I'll have to look at splits but I think it might have been of approximately the right size to have made it a tight battle between HVO and CSU for second among the four point teams.