'Bent, Goose and I carpooled to Burlington to do the Peak-2-Peak adventure run training course at Kerncliff Park. Other than the Salomon Dontgetlost.ca adventure runs, I think this might have been the biggest orienteering event in southern Ontario in 2009. The popularity was a pleasant surprise to us as organizers. I think one of the keys to the high attendance was the navigation mini-clinic that Hammer and Backwoods offered to interested attendees before they headed out. 25% of participants signed up for it! I noticed a lot of people navigating in teams in preparation for Raid The Hammer, which was awesome.
Dave Grant did a great job designing an interesting course that included a long Walk The Line section partway through. Nice terrain, beautiful weather, perfect temperature - couldn't have asked for a better day to be running around in the woods.
Following up on Tero's presentation last weekend, I wanted to make it feel more like a race, so I started alone and didn't look at the map until after I'd punched the start control. Throughout the course, I tried to visualize where I'd be in 30-60 seconds, and that sometimes even worked. I didn't make any serious errors out there, although I took a bit longer because I walked the entire line and re-punched #7 since the rules didn't say whether we were permitted to abandon the line after finding the three controls, so I figured I'd be careful (like in a race).
It was great to run into friends around the course - spent a lot of time near Trav and Gally on different parts of the course. I had a sprint from the last control to the finish with AdventureGirl! (that was won by the younger competitor, who made a controversial wrong turn immediately before the end, but recovered nicely). The only negative was that I developed a painful blister on my heel half an hour before the end - probably related to the ankle brace.
Followed up with a fun trip to Starbucks and MEC with 'Bent, Goose, Phatty and Leanimal. How is it possible that I can always find something to buy there?
'Bent and I reviewed our routes and, in most cases, had similar strategies. One thing I noticed in his description was that he was constantly readjusting his routes because, "I didn't want to follow so-and-so, so when he went the direction I'd planned to go, I went the other way". So his assignment for next time is to just run his own race, and if a good runner is in the area, try to ignore them and do whatever he would have done if they weren't around.
Beautiful autumn day! As you can see, 'Bent is truly Canadian at heart.