Orienteering race 1:45:02 [5] 12.0 km (8:45 / km)
This was one epic long course! My legs felt ok before the start, which was a surprise to me but still I knew I needed to survive till the end so I decided to pace myself and not be aggressive from the start. I got somewhat confused by a trail on the way up to #1 which I didn't see on the map, so I stuck to my compass and climbed up the rocky reentrant that led to marsh half way up the hill and it was fairly straight from there. On the way to #2 I kept looking at #4 and decided to go left to maximize the trail at the foot of that giant hill that had the control on top of it. I was doing ok on my route to #5 but then misread a hill as a depression and found myself staring at the marsh behind the control. The climb back up wasn't an amusing one. Then stupidly dropped into a rocky reentrant to the left on the way to #6 where I spent too much time carefully going down and then up another rocky one. #7 was pretty clean, I decided to stay high as much as I could to avoid climbing the green looking hillside and managed to avoid most of it. A bit too sloppy to #8 but then really unfortunate route to #9 where I decided to climb up and use the string of marshes. Half way up, immediately knew that I should've taken the trail on the lower route, but it was too late. I was clean to #10 and then decided to go right on #11, Somewhere half way through the green I got pulled too much to the left and popped to the trail right down the middle. Made a turn to run around, but then jumped off the trail and started climbing up and over the huge hill. It was risky, as attacking from the top is always tough, but I got lucky and didn't lose too much time even with my slow climb to the top. Then down the spur trying to stay in the white woods and not wanting to go into the green reentrant and hit the trail right where I wanted. Wasn't feeling particularly fast but got to #13 without any issues by staying on the trail as much as I could before crossing the open marsh. Had trouble climbing the two contour lines to #14 and started to feel very tired. Then not particularly fast to #15 and the rest of the course but always working with my compass.
Since I started first, I had a long wait at the finish for others to come in. Still am surprised that my result turned out ok and think that again I got lucky as other runners had issues on this tough course.
