Orienteering race (Love the Lakes Green X) 58:02 [4] 5.3 km (10:57 / km)
shoes: Inov8 Oroc 280
Perfect fall day. Beautiful open woods, fall colors, post card pretty.
Spent 15 minutes or so before the start walking about the warm up area with map fragment and compass, checking things off. I found the map very hard to read, and the resulting panic I think proved very valuable, because I think it helped wake up my brain.
Nevertheless, a bit of a shaky start, as I got way left, but fortunately the stone wall junction revealed my location, and I was able to correct quickly.
From there things went pretty well, except for the short leg to the boulder. Just the usual case of reality refusing to sync with what I thought I should be seeing. I had already started to head down to the road to relocate when I finally started to gronk the cliffs.
Quite surprised to discover that my time was more competitive than it usually is. Nothing special, just went to all the controls, in the correct order, stayed mostly in contact, and with very little futzing about in the circle. Of course it helped that most of the top people were running down in red or blue or just not here. Nevertheless, 'twas a really good day for me.