New England Champs 2021 Brown day 2 at Willard Brook SF (Pearl Hill SP parking area), nominally 3.9 km, 120m climb. Temps in the 60s, mostly overcast, with some light sprinkles before we left the site.
(Fixed various typos)
Much less medium green to deal with today, and any laurel I got myself into was less than waist-high. Getting the control descriptions earlier in the week we were intrigued by the four saddles in a row streak, with another reverse saddle (between two depressions) later in the course.
As yesterday #1 was the same for everybody and very straightforward...a leg about 250m long taking everyone on a contour towards the road and then distributing us from there to our next controls. I was even able to jog without discomfort (though slowly in comparison to, well, other times), so I did so when on the road or a nice smooth trail (unlike yesterday's rocky/rooty trails).
Much to my surprise I won F65+ for the weekend, despite a less than stellar run today; I'd been 1.5 minutes out of first place yesterday but Diana Todd had difficulty today and finished about 30 minutes back. I even managed to beat a few other Brown X runners for the
two-day total.
I'm not sure how I managed to stumble into #3 because I never saw either of the trails I'd hoped to find along the way (I'd been heading mostly north out of 2, and at one point turned east to get relocated and hit the control!). I was a bit high going to 5 but figured it out. Then at #6 the wheels came off; I thought I knew where I left the trail, and identified a control that wasn't mine as a clearing on a hill, but when I tried to attack from it I didn't see anything like the saddle I was looking for so had to try to match the terrain to my map; I got there eventually. Perhaps I hit a different cleared hill.
7-8-9-10 went well, but I exited 10 to the NE rather than going right out to the road, and attacked 11 from the boulder along the road...and missed. It doesn't help that 11 was a pit and the flag was down in it and I approached from the side with the pile of what had been dug out (not high enough to map as a dot knoll). I spent too much time on the southern side of the wide spur until I found a bit of indistinct trail and followed it to the SE end (where someone had left an old metal chair) and took a bearing toward 11 from it. Lo and behold I noticed the pile of dirt excavated from the pit and found the flag. Many minutes lost here. Back to the road for the final control and then across a field to finish.
Very nice prizes for the winners...a choice of maple syrup or a couple cans of hard cider for first place (we don't use much syrup and have most of a quart already, so we chose cider), and cider donuts for 2nd and 3rd with a few other choices. NE champs also received a pie; I didn't see any so don't know how large the pies were.
Looking at the combined times, linked above, it appears Nancy Duprey got me by (only?) 6 seconds. Between that, and considering I would have been satisfied with third in my age group coming into the weekend, this makes me very happy. (I know the grammar is a bit convoluted, but I'm too tired to rephrase that sentence.)
The ride home was longer due to Sunday afternoon headed-to-NYC traffic; we took "back roads" in MA as far as Chicopee; by then it looked like taking the Mass Pike and NY Thruway would take less time than 91 and 84 through CT, so we went the northern route. The S end of I 87 had an accident but we exited to get some dinner to let it clear up. It did, somewhat, but was still slow going between Harriman and the 287 exit to NJ. And we hit heavy rain in western MA and some of NY, but mostly dry roads the rest of the trip.
Great to see everyone and catch up on news. Thanks to NEOC, and J-J's course design/setting, making it worth the trip.