Orienteering race 1:41:33 [3] *** 9.95 km (10:12 / km) +198m 9:17 / km
spiked:12/21c shoes: X-Talon 212
Hisey Park, Red 7.6 km.
This one probably makes my O top 10 worst experiences. A combination of factors played into this.
I had a good run until C5. This control came much sooner than expected but I though I was just off. At the moment I had slowed back to figure out how much further I needed to go, only to look up at the control 5 m away. My distance estimation is still really poor so I was only a bit concerned.
Something that was immediately obvious to me was that route choices were trails, trusting the mapped lighter greens and patches of open forest, or just bashing. I am a sucker for bashing; even though it is rare that anything good comes from it, I just come back again and again. So for C6, I decided to work to the SW through lighter greens hoping to break into the open forest, and then S to the control. Since C5 was not in the correct clearing (as I learned after finishing), this approach drove me into deeper and deeper green, my compass work broke further and further down, and I curled so far left that I made it back to the main N-S trail maximizing my honeysuckle. I was annoyed with how grim this was and so I boiled as I worked the last half of the way to the reentrant. After working through the green to C7 from the trail, I was happy to see that they had been hacking out the honeysuckle but concerned that that part of my map just evaporated. I found the depression at C8, sadly controlless. Baffled, I actually wondered who stole the control because there was no other depression on the map. Relocating, I found the extra depression and the control (curse but only a minute was lost). C9 was generously placed a bit closer to the trail than mapped so it was not buried in dark green (joy). After being bounced around a bit, my idiocy kicked in. I chose to go to C10 by cutting across the large circle of broken greens along the first half of the line. It had been tantalizingly cleared for about 50 m, there was a fence, and then the shrubs closed in. I was being swallowed and so I decided that too much time was being wasted so I broke N to the trail. Having done this I changed plan and took the more minor trail down the hillside to follow the reentrant back to C10. I picked the wrong one; read, I then committed to more medium green. C11 went little better and I thought that I had the worst of it; little did I know.
I had a nice respite until C15. I messed up on C16. The trail shows a cart track, laugh. I can not even imagine how this was a cart track when mapped in 2010. Halfway between the road and C15, it had started to rapidly fade towards an indistinct trail. I noticed and forgot this, so cutting straight S back to the trail from C15, I ran across it and after going 2X the distance that seemed reasonable, with a hill looming to my left, I aimed back into the brush to fix the problem. When I found the trail, I was shocked at it's lameness yet I used it to work to C16, pretty annoyed with myself and the woods. Up from C16 to the ride, I looked NW, paused, and decided that even though it was, at the time and in retrospect, the best plan to fight to the field as others have noted, there was absolutely no way I was going through 2nd and/or 3rd green to get there. I went back through the briars along the rides, cut toward the stone building on the indistinct trail used from C15 moving mostly N toward the rough open. Heading to the building, I thought to myself, "Could I possibly be having less fun?" I crossed a..... BAM!
There had been a flowing 1 foot wide streamlet. I was looking ahead running across it, there remained the bottom two wires from an old fence, and I was down, chest in the stream, face in the mud on the opposing bank. Garmin shows that I spent two minutes finding clear water to get the mud from my glasses, picking mud from my ears and ejecting it from my nose. Saw cedarcreek just about then and warned him about the fence. I wandered to C17. Xtalon 212's are not good on last year's steep wild grass as I learned climbing to the overlook. Erred on the reentrant here and considered dnf'ing, then got it together to finish.
On the positive side, Steve had set some interesting controls, the conditions were terrific for running, and the missing skin will grow back. Looking forward to next week!