Orienteering race 1:42:07 [4] *** 6.73 km (15:11 / km) +294m 12:27 / km
spiked:13/16c shoes: VJ Falcons 5
COC Long on Black Magic map at Whistler. SL 5.2km. Ski lift ride followed by 10 minute downhill walk to the start. Spectacular scenery. Very convenient since it was about a three minute walk to the lift from where we were staying. Could see the arena from our room (and went there after running to watch live results on line rather than wait for printouts to be posted). :-)
Physically challenging course with advertised climb of 230m and a net descent of 400m from start to finish, some of it pretty steep. Woods were thickish with many areas of limited visibility, so fairly slow going. There was one untimed stream crossing which involved about 5 contours of descent (rope aided at one point) and 5 contours of climb, with the horizontal distance for the leg at about 70m. We were allowed 5 minutes to cross, which gave me about a minute of recovery time. The course also had about 600m of streamered routes, all through the woods, all of questionable necessity.
My run was OK except for one major error on control #11, which was the last control on the course with challenging navigation (the last five controls transported us across and down the ski area to the finish). About halfway to 11 I misread where I was and ended up descending about 7 steep contours through light green junk only to have to climb 5 contours back up to the control after I relocatedon a trail. That pretty much sapped any energy I had left and cost about 8 minutes. Also lost a couple of minutes on #6 searching a bit for a saddle in an area with several small hills (and therefore several saddles). I think I just didn't see the flag due to vegetation on my first pass. Ended up 6th out of about 25 in M55. 3rd was achievable without the screw-up on 11.