Orienteering race 1:45:51 [3] *** 7.43 km (14:14 / km) +96m 13:22 / km
spiked:13/14c shoes: Inov8 ORoc280-B 2013-10
Nice day for a long stroll in the woods. I started off conservatively because I didn't want to use up my energy too early, and was confident 3.5 hours was plenty of time to complete the 7 km Pygmy. (If I'd been healthy I might have considered the full 'goat once I heard it was around 11.5 km.) Townsend was a good place for this because there's plenty of detail but the hills aren't too horrendous (as evidenced by the mapping with 2.5m contours). The Pygmy was an abbreviated version of the BG visiting about 2/3rds of the BG controls. Temps stayed reasonable and there were only a few showers or drizzle so conditions held up.
There were several long trail runs near the end that I trotted most of the way rather than walked, spurred on by feeling competitive with Judy K and Nadia P, and Nancy K who I later learned had sprained her ankle on the course. I managed to finish a few seconds ahead of Nadia but couldn't catch Judy.
We were even allowed to skip a control, a la Billygoat rules; I skipped #2 (first 8 were same as BG), and 2 and 8 were the ones skipped by most on the Pygmy course (though #1 had potential too but I was halfway to it before I noticed that).
Pia Webb won the Pygmy with a time of about 61 minutes. The BG course turned out to be on the short side with a winning time of 77 minutes by Swedish exchange student Isak Prellner (followed by some in the 80-82 minute range). I got a shirt! ;-) (BG shirts were teal and the Pygmy shirts were light blue...BG-lite, so a lighter colored shirt. Third BG-lite, and first time shirts were awarded in the shorter version.) Nice design by Alex, too.
Thanks, Alex and Ed, for all your work setting and taking down, and the post-race pizza was an inspired choice!!!