orienteering 3:52:00 [3] 32.5 km (7:08 / km)
Hudson Highlander IX. Lousy race for me. I blew #2 badly and got dropped, then messed up 3, fumbled my way through to the first exchange, went out the wrong way from there. Demoralized. Walked a leg or two, then picked it up a bit and had a fast final loop, which was mostly on trails. I noticed from the splits that the 2 legs in the middle where I basically gave up cost me 10 mins. That was the difference between top 10 and top 5. The moral - as always - is never, EVER, give up a race before its over (injuries excepted). There is *always* a chance to recover from errors no matter how stupid I am on any given control. After control #3 all I could think was "the race is lost." Thats a killer. Not only does it make navigation impossible, its just not nice to think that way. Everyone out there (myself included) expects me to try my best the entire race. I want people who beat me in a race or on any given leg to think "Yeah, I beat Eddie! Hot damn!!" Rightly so. Have a look at comments on my route in the splits list. I was 9th.
