Orienteering race 2:22:01 [3] 7.34 km (19:22 / km) +124m 17:51 / km
shoes: Columbia Romero trail runners
Pawtuckaway camping weekend, Sunday Green
My fourth time out here and I finally didn't make a 30+ minute mistake. So I guess that's progress.
First real orienteering in a while... probably since a year prior.
Light rain on Sunday, and it looked like rain the prior day and night cleared out all the campers. Not nearly as many people around this year.
Strangely all the courses I've run here go clockwise around the map.
On to the point-by-point: (and I forgot to mark control 2 in the track, live with it)
1: Pulled up maybe 75m too short and looked around, wasted about 9 minutes looking around, ugh
2: I swear the flag was on the wrong hilltop but maybe I circled the wrong one, oh well. First time I've run across a very chatty old guy who didn't know what he was doing on an advanced course running with two canes. Yes I'm looking for that one too, no I don't really want to talk about it.
3: Finally settled down and did fine for most of the leg. First time ever I recognized a place in the middle of Pawtuckaway from a previous meet and used it to my advantage (the cliffs on the SW part of Genial Pond). Only mistake was getting too far east and going around the marsh on the wrong side.
4: Spiked it twas satisfying.
5: Also spiked and was refreshing with water (no trash bag)
6: I hate the big island. Green was the only course that went over here. The only other course i ran that came over here (I think two years ago) went along almost exactly the same route though the locations were different. Hit 6 just fine.
7: Used this same idea previously, follow the linear patch of stony ground towards the control but messed it up this time. Looks like I went too far E, now I can see on the map some extra minor stony parts I probably was into erroneously. Looped around and was lucky to see it.
8: Spiked
9: Spiked , long and satisfying leg, not hard to keep online since the lake is visible from the woods but really had to check off features along the way to make sure you didn't go too far
10: Easy, recognized this part from 2 years ago too to the extent I knew when the trail was coming up at the top of the hill. Happy for some trail walking at this point.
11/12/13: easy after 10 but finally saw two other people (probably red/blue runners) -- at 11 were the first people I've seen since getting to the big island
Anyway, it was fun and I did OK. Rain was light and not too noticable in the woods. Best showing at Pawtuckaway ever -- usually run right up to 3 hours on green. Yay for me.
Thank you perennial Pawtuckaway organizers.