orienteering race (A-Meet) 1:07:29 [5] *** 4.4 km (15:20 / km) +120m 13:30 / km
spiked:10/13c
WCOC Ansonia Middle Red-Y. After my fine result on the middle at West Point, I was really looking to make a statement. Unfortunately, the statement was, "You don't belong in the big leagues!" I only had 2 significant problems, but they were major mistakes. First I somehow contoured too much around the hill between #2 and #3 rather than descending. As a result, I wound up recrossing the main NS trail rather than the smaller trail 50 m in front of the control. And if I had considered that I was crossing a large trail, it would not have cost me much. But I didn't, and instead ran around like a crazy person checking every boulder I could see and trying to make sense of the fact that there was a rise in front of me but none on my map. Finally I consulted my compass which told me I was facing E not W. But this was not the worst of my follies. For reasons that remain unclear to me, I mistakenly navigated directly from #7 to #11. This was certainly not an ideal route choice, but it was hardly a major disaster as #8 was only 150 m away. However, I became flustered and tried to correct my mistake too hurriedly, and then I was out of contact with the map. In retrospect, I had crossed the EW marsh S or #8 and not the NS marsh just W of the control. I suppose the fact that I crossed a trail should have alerted me to my error, but sadly it didn't until another 10 minutes had been lost. All in all, I very disheartening performance.