Orienteering race 20:39 [5] ***
Flying Pig Sprint
It's not often that I say this, but I was pleased with my speed in this race. Too bad about the navigation. I had over 2 minutes of errors, which should be almost impossible in a sprint! All the same, I can't complain too much about my time. I was the 4th woman of 23 on the Green/Brown/Orange sprint course, and 24th out of 85 racers on the course, including men. That's good news for my North American Sprint Series rank. Sprint Finals Weekend, here I come! ;-)
Other good news is that my knee didn't hurt TOO much, and the injured foot wasn't a factor.
MrPither smoked his sprint course, finishing over 20 seconds ahead of 2nd place - who happened to be another GHO member, Hammer. Awesome!
Orienteering 48:01 [4] *** 4.2 km (11:26 / km)
(injured)
Flying Pig Relay (U.S. Relay Championships)
So finally we got to the race that had given me butterflies for the past few days. It's one thing to screw up my own races, but I really, REALLY didn't want to be the one to ruin things for my highly competent teammates - Sudden, Griz and Hammer. Yikes, could there be more pressure than that? Racing with a Swede and two guys with a zillion North Am Champs medals between them?
Sudden led off with a good leg. This afternoon's race was the opposite of this morning. I navigated well to each control (with one poor route choice that cost me a couple of minutes), but I went slowly. Just as well - it was a very physical race, with lots of scrambling up and down steep, muddy sides of valleys. (As a result of today, Sudden has convinced me that I should at least try orienteering shoes.)
About 2/3 of the way through the race, I turned my right ankle, and my foot pain returned with a vengeance. EEYYOWWW!! I hobbled up a big, mucky hill, gasping in pain the whole way, then gritted my teeth for the rest of my run. I was too sore to cool down.
Meanwhile, Griz went out and had a great leg, followed by Hammer, who anchored our team with a stellar performance. (An honourable mention is due to MrPither for his cooperative response to our calls of "Slide, Patrick, slide!" at the muddy finish chute.)
Result - we were 1st overall, but not eligible to become the U.S. Relay Champions, so that honour went to the 2nd place team. Still, our Pig medals are pretty cool! Looking at the results for the race leg that I did, there were two F21 women ahead of my time, and I was 7th of 14 runners overall. I was extremely relieved to finish without doing anything TOO embarrassing.