Walking warm up/down 11:42 [2] 0.88 km (13:13 / km) +62m 9:47 / km
shoes: Inov8 ORoc280-A 2013-08
The part from finish to start because I forgot to start my watch at the parking lot. Actual was about 1.5 km.
Stopped to drop off a bag with flip flops so I could go inside the building with results ("no spikes!" they said yesterday). Turns out they put cardboard down on the floor so that we could go inside with spikes. Oh well. Then I talked to someone about next weekend. Still made it to start with plenty of time. Thanks to Peter, Gail, and Jim Henderson for holding down the fort at the starts both days.
Orienteering race 1:27:57 [3] *** 5.6 km (15:42 / km) +138m 13:59 / km
spiked:7/11c shoes: Inov8 ORoc280-A 2013-08
Brown X day 2 Classic Champs, 3.6 km, 120m climb nominal
Not my day. Did the first two controls just fine, went up and over to 3 but then looked too low, and caught up to several other people and let myself get distracted going to 4. Plus without vision correction (astigmatism) the magnifier isn't quite enough to make black or very tiny details clear so I wasn't sure what was up and what was down, especially since I misread the clue as spur instead of reentrant. Eventually bailed out to the nearby trail and corrected; several minutes lost. Fine to 5 especially with a train of folks going in and then turning >90 degrees left en masse.
My first mistake to 6 was to try to go straight and check off boulders at the edge of green (mountain laurel) while pace counting. I don't pace count often, and it didn't work here especially after I let myself be distracted (again!) by other runners. Attempted to figure out what was going on but I think kept drifting downhill. After wandering for too much time I decided I'd better bail out to the big trail to the west of 6. It took forever and when I finally *did* hit a trail, it was the trail that crossed the line between 6 and 7. Trudged up the hill and when I got close to the bare rock along the trail WSW of the control, I attacked but missed and turned the wrong way. Nice little circle here until I tried again a bit higher up and found it. Ugh.
I managed okay on the rest though again it was really hard to interpret the detail in the circle for 7...I could see the spur with cliffs just fine but the clue said reentrant so I assumed correctly it was a very small one. Better to 8, and 9, a bit off to 10 where I checked another boulder up-stream (I guess it's the one mapped with the blob of green around it which I didn't notice at the time).
Time for a visit to the eye doctor to see what I can get to help me read the map.
Finished fourth US overall today, I think, and fourth for the weekend. Janet Findlay had a fairly large error yesterday but a good run today and finished third behind Sandy and Mary Jo. Marion Owen was first both days.
Beautiful woods; I love Pound Ridge and hope it's used again fairly soon. Thanks to Geof Connor for all his work with the park people to get access to this area again after a period of orienteering drought.