Orienteering (Course Setting) 3:15:41 [1] **** 5.22 mi (37:29 / mi) +70m 35:59 / mi
spiked:36/38c
Serpentine Barrens Conservation Park, MD. This was supposed to be 6.1K. I got to the park sometime after 3pm and it was in the 90s F (92 F, while driving over). I was tired from my run in the heat earlier, and I'd had lunch too. I walked almost the whole thing. I pulled-up streamers from the temporary courses that I'd set at the very end of March, and I put night-o ready controls and streamers at some completely new sites.
Just as I was getting ready to leave my car at the start of this, I realized that I'd left my gaiters behind. I guess that's better than leaving behind the streamers, like I did at the Soccerplex and Hoyles Mill in May. I walked around as many thorns as I could. I was wearing the really low socks that stop at the shoe; the kind I almost never wear. I'd set the new courses to avoid as much of the thorny areas as possible, but I still had to retrieve the old streamers among them. I got a little scratched in the thorny areas, but it was nothing that a decent set of gaiters wouldn't have completely protected me from. Sometimes in the more open areas, I'd come across a surprise thorn. Most of the terrain was free of stilt grasses but it did grow in the lower and normally wetter places.
I hit most of the controls well but I was glad that I was merely finding most of them rather than setting them, since the summertime visibility makes it harder to be sure about some things. At least twice, I had to do some walking around to verify that I had the right rootstock. I found a new one too, since it was near a control and the trunk had fallen on top of part of the mapped feature. I'm giving Peggy the details to make an announcement for anyone who wants to try the new courses. I weighed out at 197lbs today, and most of this is sure to be water. I was getting pretty tired in the heat even though I had water to drink.