Running warm up/down 7:00 [1]
So much for my new resolution to do longer warm-ups. I managed to do a nice, crunchy ankle turn about 30 seconds into it too.
Orienteering race (Sprint) 30:00 [5] *** 3.0 km (10:00 / km)
I've recently been told that clinging to my image of myself as a slow runner is not helpful. It's never bothered me to be slow, but upon some reflection, I've had to acknowledge that I do use it as an excuse to stay in my comfort zone, especially in shorter events (i.e. less than 24 hours), which I don't view as my forte.
So... tonight's mission was straightforward: push all the way through the sprint, and go faster than feels comfortable. Navigation was not as important, just this once.
We got maps in advance, and I spent 5 minutes reviewing the course. I'm so unaccustomed to getting maps in advance anymore that this didn't help me at ALL, as evidenced by the fact that I visited #8 between #1 and #2. I wasn't lost. I really thought #8 was the second control on the map - until I touched the flag, and glanced down and noticed that the control circle was connected to #9. Luckily, it wasn't too far off the trail that I never should have left, so hopefully I only lost about a minute. So much for my new strategy of focusing on speed above all else - sigh...
But after that, things went not badly. In fact, compared to some of the stories I heard afterward, I guess things went pretty well. I was thrown off a bit by the 1:5000 map scale ("oh, there's the flag already!"). But other than 30 seconds of wandering through a thicket-infested ditch looking for a flag at #11, everything went smoothly. And on the bright side, I had no trouble finding #8 later in the race, since I'd been there already!
My result looked a bit too good, and I knew the time was correct, so I sat down with the map and reviewed it to make sure I hadn't screwed up and missed a control - but I hadn't. So the finish order was Sudden in 1st, MrPither in 2nd, and... me in 3rd??
Orienteering 27:00 [2] ***
Combination cooldown and rough/precision navigation exercise. Beautiful summer night. Hopefully we will have some more spring after this - I'm not ready to run in the heat just yet!