Orienteering race 1:20:48 [4] *** 4.6 km (17:34 / km) +245m 13:52 / km
Long course at Salmon La Sac. I was very surprised at how good my result here ended up. After yesterday, I went out just trying to have a good time. I wasn't planning to run unless I felt like it and I was going to go out of my way if necessary to take routes that were reasonably open. Well, the course lent itself to this stuff. It also started out with a long, uphill leg on an open spur, so that gave me a chance to warm-up without really losing time for walking. It became apparent after a while that many people were having more technical difficulties than me. I kept seeing them over and over. The back half of the course was mostly trail running and since I've actually been training, was warmed up, but hadn't pushed too hard, I had plenty left to take advantage of this. Ended up first in class and only 15th down for the course. Very pleased!
I know that in general my strength is much more in navigation then speed, so I tend to imagine that I will do best on stuff like middle courses and fall behind on long courses. This week didn't really work that way. I think partly because I'm in shape, so going long wasn't so hard, but also because of some fallacies in my assumptions. The middle courses have much shorter legs, so many of the folks who are my speed, but don't navigate as well actually have an easier time. They can't get as far off of the course because each control is somewhat of an attack for the next. When the legs get longer (but still technical), more of the competition falls apart because when a mistake gets made, it has the potential to get you farther off course and can be harder to relocate as a result.