Orienteering 1:30:00 [3] 3.87 mi (23:15 / mi)
shoes: inov-8 X-Claw 275
@ Fountainhead - Bull Run Marina
The new compass is delicious. The needle doesn't bob and dip like a silver minnow in a shallow pond. Nothing moves on the compass besides the needle, I just turn my body and note the color on the ring and run full speed ahead without noting anything around me and sometimes the control just appears before me. And sometimes it does not appear at all and then I have lifted my attention from the features of the map and I'm lost. So with the new compass, I'm happy I can get lost both more quickly and with more accuracy.
I'm now afraid of three things: getting so completely lost requiring rescue, poison ivy/oak and ticks. This week, I addressed my tick fear by wearing long sleeved shirts, long tight pants and tall socks which were all sprayed with pyrethrin and then covering my exposed skin with DEET. I guess my fear of ticks is greater than my fear of strong chemicals. And I got advice on post-orienteering tick bite prevention after I ran today.
OK, I lost time on 4 and 7, 8 & 9.
On 4, I thought I knew which direction I was facing and failed to use the compass and I went down the wrong ravine. Backtracked to 3 to reorient.
7, I spent a long time thinking about which way to go because I didn't want to go up and down too much. I think I went all the way to the big body of water and then went uphill. The advice I got after was to not go too far from the straight line, the river junction was the best point to aim for.
I forgot what I did on 8.
The transition to the 2nd map and to 9 was confusing to me. I'm not quite sure why.
I combined this with a hill workout, good efforts up all the hills. OK, maybe most of the hills - or at least the hills I felt recovered enough to run up. Such running pleasure today - there was a moment on a trail (downhill) that was particularly nice where I can run and feel almost deer-like. There was another moment, uphill, where I felt strong and well, where the feel the foot gripping against a steep dirt hill and pushing down on it and willing it not to slip was particularly satisfying.