Orienteering warm up/down 40:00 [1] ***
9c rhr:44 slept:7.0 shoes: Innov-8 mudclaw 330
model event - mostly walking
Orienteering race 2:17:51 [4] *** 9.2 km (14:59 / km) +310m 12:49 / km
spiked:4/16c shoes: Innov-8 mudclaw 330
Ugh. The mistakes I made! I could put a lot less effort into my training and still do this poorly. Not the course's fault, but mine, though the thick woods tore a lot of holes in my hide. I was tryihng to be extra careful to keep map contact, but had spotty success. After today I figured out that my compass seems to have come off its bearings, and doesn't always swing freely. I knew it was a bit sticky, but not that bad. I thought I had corrected for that (noticed it stickiness in the last couple of local meets), but often found myself 30degrees off of the heading I wanted (though this terrain probably contributed). I wish that was the real culprit, but it had a lot more to do with my not reading the map well. I could blame that on 1:15,000 with lots of detail, but I should be able to do that.
Nonetheless, some good points. My best leg was 12 - I was able to recover quickly when things weren't right, and the flag showed up just where it should be. Often I did most of a leg well (e.g., 3, 5, 9, 12). Unfortunately on several of those I screwed up in the circle (especially 5, where I paused within 10m of the control, but was looking for the wrong feature). Worst leg was 2, which I ran off by about 30degrees to the right, and if I hadn't seen the out of bounds flags, after 15 minutes of trying to recover, I'd still be there. Winsplits tells me I had about half an hour of mistakes total, which isn't too far off.
I benefitted a lot when I was running with people, was even faster than them moving through the terrain, but they could navigate/mapread while moving, and I can only do general spotchecks on the run. Still, I got all of the controls, and I had quite a lot of fun solving the puzzles (slowly, but solved)., so I have mixed feelings