GPS track
Green X at Sprague Brook Park, south of Buffalo. Did OK, not great. I had only two actual errors, specific places where I got lost time due to a mistake of one kind or another, although I know there had to be some sub-standard route choices, plus just the general hesitations, reading my map too often, and not moving fast enough through the woods. Overall, it was a good course for me, for not having done an A meet in many years (like 5 or so?). It's wasn't terribly challenging technically, and it offered a lot of opportunities for trail running.
My main frustration was #1, and this was even after I told myself multiple times to be extra careful on the first control. The direct line to the control would have crossed about 100 m of medium green, so I ruled that choice out.
The two other choices seemed almost equally as good -- go north of the green, along the edges of rough open fields; or go south of the green, on a somewhat windy trail system.
I decided to stick to the trails, but I somehow got botched up; I left a trail to do what I thought was a slight shortcut through some open woods, to another trail, and found a small stream in my way that I had to make my way across, which was no big deal, except that based on where I thought I was, there should have been no stream!
That should have set off alarms but it didn't, I just pushed on, and in a few more seconds, saw the edge of a field. I then realized where I was, which was 100-150 m north of where I had expected to be, and was able to find the control without too much extra lost time.
I think I lost about 2 minutes in this ordeal, because the person who started 2 minutes after me (John Campbell, I think) on Green X got to the control just before I did. So no REAL big deal in terms of time lost, but it was very disconcerting, especially since I was making what I thought was a major effort to NOT screw up on #1.
After that, I settled in reasonably well with no other major time losses (other than, as I said, referring to the map too often and moving too slowly) until #9.
I got to the area of the #9 circle as per my plan, but lost maybe 1-2 minutes hunting for the control. The feature was a boulder in a marsh, very close to a rootstock. I saw a rootstock, in fact I saw two rootstocks close together which should have been a clue to me, because the map only showed one rootstock near the boulder. Still, I looked all around the pair of rootstocks for the boulder, which wasn't to be found. I then saw another rootstock about 30 m away, and when I headed for that, I found the boulder and the control. I realized later that the rootstock pair that I initially went towards was just outside of the circle.
I finished16th out of 39 starters on Green X, which I was reasonably happy with. I was exactly in the middle of my age group (M60): 6th out of 11. Rick Worner was 3rd in that age group, and he only beat me by about 3 minutes, so I wasn't too far out of being in the top 3. However, the top guy in our age group, Bob Lux, was at 49:13, a full 12 minutes ahead of me. Very humbling, considering, I had only 3-4 minutes of what I'd call mistakes.