Orienteering race 1:11:37 [4] *** 7.06 km (10:09 / km)
spiked:13/18c rhr:48 slept:7.0
1000 Days A Event - Blue Course on the First with the Most map. First control was strange - had to run backwards past the callup line and parallel to the walk to the start. Then I wiped out with my knee landing on a rock instead of the grass (found out later that I had a small cut plus a nice little bruise). Was reading pretty well, but ran one cliff past the control and stood still for a 20 secs, figuring that out. C2 went smoothly. I think Ross passed me on the way to C3. I punched (embarrasingly slowly) just before Hillary at C4, then almost stayed with her to C5 (shared leg with Red). C6-9 went great - I was reading wonderfully on the run, perhaps best I've done. I thought C10 was also going well, but it turned out I had drifted left - in hindsight, it should have been obvious that there were too many trees around. C11 was a minor mistake - didn't see the control hung from a single tree in the reentrant, so I sprinted over the top of the next "spur" to bland terrain (no reentrant), so I quickly turned back around. C12 was short and C13 was fun - countouring around right of the line. I ran the road around to C14, which was great for me - I think Peter Gagarin only made up a little ground going straight. Instead of blindly following Peter, I took the time to set a bearing for C15, and was right on 2/3 of the way there, running off a distinct patch of light green, when I decided to try to catch Peter. Unfortunately, he missed this leg pretty badly (for him), and it took me a couple of minutes to relocate and get the flag. John F passed me on the way to C16, but he slowed on the uphill, so I caught back up and tried to hang. We went opposite ways around the knoll, and I set a bearing for C17 on the way in, but he was still long gone by the time I had punched. I ignored the C17 boulders because it looked like they were in the green, and the circle was in a gap (but it was a white gap, so after checking a couple of rock features to the left, I returned and punched right behind someone who totally outran me down the road to C18 and the finish.
Zach did well on Yellow, placing second in about 10min/km, and Nate finished 6 minutes behind the late Orange entry, Andrew Childs, to grab 2nd. Most of the lost time (4 minutes?) was on the penultimate control, where Andrew caught Nate.