Orienteering 10:43:38 [2] *** 24.6 km (26:10 / km) +1249m 20:52 / km
16c slept:0.0
North American Rogaine Championships in Allegeny State Park, NY. (w/Dave Onkst). For our first control after midnight, Dave and I came from #406 toward #804. Coming off a broad spur and then a trail, we missed--it wasn't until later that we learned the trail had been re-routed. We lost well over 30 minutes hunting for it and going well out of the way. Dave got us back on track by interpreting the stream to be the one shown on the map. There were many others that were unmapped. Mentally drained, we opted to drop control #405 to get back onto schedule. Later we started dropping others like #403. I was just moving too slowly with my hurt hip flexor.
By morning, things started looking better. Perhaps there was even some healing but I found that I could start running more. We made it back to the start with 4 hours left. We rested a half hour and lightened our load for a final loop in the northeast. We toyed with getting #401 and #702 but felt it was going to be too close to our time limit. It was probably the right decision given our speed and the fact that we had trouble with a few controls (#601 and #308). Dave also started having hamstring problems the last two controls so he had to walk when I could finally run again. We did run in most of the last 3k with Alan Young and Declan Honnelly.
Our route after midnight was: #804, #506, #604, #306, #802, #501, #606, #602, #402, base camp, #302, #414, #503, #301, #601, #308 and to the finish. The straight-line distance shown was achieved by actually covering 24.6K (15.3 miles)from midnight to 11am. The climb for this period translated to 4,100ft. That means the total distance traveled over 24 hours was about 62K (38.5 miles) and just under 10,000 ft. of climb. The distance was 15 miles less than what we did in the SVO Rogaine but the climb achieved was 12% higher.
I felt we made a good effort. With a little more training, I might not have gotten hurt and we may have been able to get more controls. As it was, we got 3rd in the Male Masters category and 6th overall. I can be happy with that. Once again, partnering with Dave Onkst worked well. I think he let me lead a bit more to keep our pace together since I was going slower most of the time.