It was a beautiful day for orienteering, unfortunately for me I could not make it to the event since I had a soccer game and also was a volunteer most of the morning unloading pumpkins from a truck at church. I was able to make it by 3 PM so I got the enjoyment of picking up flags on the red course. The after story of this would be incredibly sore legs and back on Sunday - but this was still Saturday. I've written up this summary of the course (my course in red dash) to help other orienteers look at possible approaches. I am pretty familiar with the area - so I had a little fun with this. Dave Shuman and I got to start together, so we at least had a little bit of a fun run.
Start to 1 - OK this was pretty easy, down the trail across the lake berm running with Dave at an easy pace, south onto open trail. I did enter the woods early instead of taking the conservative route of the trail and cutting west at the open area. This worked pretty well as the woods were quite open.
1 to 2 - This was an Orange level leg, southwest to the trail and a distinct bend west of the flag. Pretty easy.
2 to 3 - Original plan was south to west trail and run to due south of flag and bushwack up. I ended up cutting across to the berm on its far southeast corner as a recent burn had left the terrain pretty wide open. I noticed a few other runners had taken this approach (plenty of footprints going up the berm at this point)..
3 to 4 - I had a bit of trouble tying the flag while jogging, and about midway a lot of downed trees slowed the pace. But I did feel pretty good running and this route pretty much headed north and hand-railed the visible trail to the east. The idea here was to pay attention to the clue (thicket west side) and try to ensure you came across it from the west - which meant staying off the eastern trail.
4 to 5 - Essentially a trail run. A glance at the map showed that the area near CP5 was tricky with no obvious attack point. I over-ran it slightly and had to double back as the flag appeared to be deeper in the palmettos than I though was shown on the map. The idea was simply to follow the edge of the palmettos to the flag and that worked pretty well.
5 to 6 - Essentially due west loking for the best terrain. The distance was short and the clue of a distinct tree I guessed would be visible from a distance and it was.
6 to 7 - The plan here was to find the easiest terrain. I ended up going along the edge of the marsh, however the fenceline was probably easier (it looked like it). The large thicket would be hard to miss - so I was not worried on the approach and took it pretty fast (for the terrain).
7 to 8 - The first part was essentially a fast walk. The footing was treacherous - though the due east bearing was pretty easy. I had a bit of confusion as I came out on the trail as the area to the east was wide open (yellow terrain) and the nearest yellow terrain was 200 meters south of where I figured I was. I took a left on the trail and essentially chalked the discrepancy up to another burn or clearing. The CP was a very easy find from an easy attack point (intersection).
8 to 9 - At this point I stuffed the map in the bag with the flags I was carrying. I figured I would see if I could find the controls using memory (I try to practice this technique whenever possible). I memorized southeast of berm edge for CP9 and due north on man-made object (which I knew to be a sign) for CP10. I picked up the pace as I was feeling pretty good and glanced at my watch as I passed the split oak along the trail (47 minutes). I figured I could finish up in an easy 60 minutes (pretty respectable time). I used the trail as long as I could and then cut across the open terrain to the visible berm. I blew right by the control and got into the open burn area - though I quickly realized I had passed it up. I turned around and looked, no flag - so I broke down and snagged the map back out of the bag. Visibility was very good and I should have seen the flag, looking back I saw a guy in cammo pants carrying a tripod right where the flag should be. I looked at the control description - rootstock. The rootstock was right there in my line of vision and as I ran upon I saw that my angle had simply obscured the flag. Oh well.
9 to 10 - I avoided the temptation to look at the map again (I should have) which I had stuffed back in the bag. I headed due east to the trail and then turned south to head to the trail intersection and towards CP10. It took about 30 seconds to realize something was wrong. The terrain looked wrong and I should have reached the intersection. I broke down again and fished out the map - DOH!, I was already south of the intersection and just ran further south, I don't know how I figured I would end up north of the intersection. It was one of those orienteering moments where you aren't sure how you thought something, and you realize you messed up. Oh well - I turned around and poured on some speed as I knew exactly where to go. Sure enough I could see the flag about 10 strides past the sign. I guess the moral was in doing Memory-O pay attention to the relative positions of the flags.
10 to finish - I was pretty tired and my back was hurting, I still poured on some speed trying now to beat 65 minutes. In the end I ran 65:20 (not bad) which was a dissapointment, but I learned some pretty good lessons about how to use memory in orienteering and hopefully will do well in the next memory-O.
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