Thomass Eliminator at Morrison Forest - the fun finale of this winter's age/gender handicapped, best-4-of-8 orienteering race series. Ironically, it was uncomfortably hot since we haven't acclimatized to this weird summer weather.
The Male and Overall Series winner, Hammer, had already been determined since the only person with enough points to possibly challenge him - Andrei L - wasn't there. Hammer raced hard anyway and finished 2nd.
The Junior Male winner, Teo Mlynczyk, and Junior Female winner, AdventureGirl! also had locks on their series victories.
The only series podium position up for grabs was the Female winner. AdventureGirl! was in contention for that one too and needed to beat me by 7 positions for the win. We enjoyed a lot of pre-race trash talk, as did Hammer/Dad. I wondered what the heck a 14-year-old would do with the bottle of ice wine designated for the female winner. AG!'s parents figured it would make a lovely gift.
The Eliminator is a set of 3 sprint orienteering races. The top 20 people in the first race advance to the second round. Everyone else can do all three races but they no longer have a chance to win. The top 10 people in the second race stay in contention for the third race, which determines the top race rankings.
Because I'd trained on a different map scale yesterday, I reminded myself that things would come up more quickly than expected. I passed a trail - yup, *way* too fast. Oh, and there's another trail faster than expected. (*Too* fast again - hello??) I turned on that trail and headed to the control site - except it wasn't there. Back and forth, totally confused - there was nothing difficult about this, so what was I missing? I knew there was no way I could make the top 20 after wasting this much time so the rest of the day would have to be mental training instead of racing.
I'd like to say I relocated but the truth is, I saw people running into a nearby block of forest and realized that I must be on a trail parallel to the one I'd wanted, even though I didn't figure out my error until after the race. (I'd over-compensated in my mind for the map scale and this was compounded by failing to notice a trail on the map.) I pushed hard on the remaining hills and trails so that my result wouldn't be too embarrassing after all the trash talk. As I came into the finish, Pathetic said, "There's #19." Soooo lucky. AdventureGirl! placed 1st. We both moved on to the next round.
The second sprint went through some nasty vegetation and when I returned, someone pointed out how bloody my right arm was. The nav went well and there were some hard legs of running in the heat. I managed to squeak into 9th place. AG! placed 1st again.
Final round... Lots of running in the heat again - not my strong point. AdventureGirl! won the race and I came
7th 8th [results updated today, leading to edits in this paragraph]... AG! had won the series! But it wasn't over yet... Noticing that he had missed a control, FunRun (who was looking strong out there today) disqualified himself from the top 10. That moved me into
6th 7th so AG! and I shared the overall Female title and she took the Junior Female win. She will be on Canada's national team in a couple of years so there isn't much longer to try to compete with her!
Big thanks to the Gators for organizing this Orienteering Ontario fundraiser event and setting three fun sprints for us with different start/finish locations. Tough logistics but it turned out well!