Orienteering race 1:13:07 [4] *** 9.1 km (8:02 / km) +300m 6:54 / km
spiked:12/21c slept:6.75
Red Day 2 at the Fox Chaser / Interscholastic Champs. Certainly a better run than yesterday, but little mistakes still added up enough to put me a couple of minutes behind Rob. I finished just 1 second behind Randy Hall, who is an 80-point runner, which is my goal for 2007.
I started out a bit cautiously, measuring too much, instead of just checking off features, but from when I hit the trail on the way to C4, all the way to C8, it was almost all trail and field running - I probably didn't push quite hard enough in this section. Got hung up on fences on C13 and C18. The first was when I left C12 and angled up the hill, barely left of the line, and hadn't seen the fence on the map (hadn't seen any fences to worry about in the terrain), but it was a pain to cross - lost over a minute and by the time I realized how tough it would be to cross, I was too far committed (including having thrown the map and compass onto the other side) to go around. The later blunder was also not seeing the fence on the map (it was right on a field/distinct vegetation boundary), and I thought I was smart going in from the right-hand side, but no. Pretty much OK in, but I lost pace count when I saw Walt searching after my 19 (which was one of his controls, also), and stopped way short, with nothing to read on the map.
Nate had a decent run, not quite as good as yesterday, but still had the top time of the day on Orange X to win the JV title. May have to take him to Texas next year to enter the Varsity competition (which Michael Sanstrom won by an incredible 21 minutes).
Zach missed winning the primary school competition by 1:37, after making a 7+ minute error on the penultimate control. He punched out of the woods to the field on the wrong side of a corner and the trail and trees lined up for him, so he thought he was all set, but was 90 degrees off.
Chelsea had a very nice run to finish 8th in JVF for the day (and moved up to 12th overall). This was after overcoming serious problems on the first 3 controls.