Greenbelt - Jan 23, 2011

Course: Blue [8.2 km; 220m; 19 controls]
Time: 2:27:28 - winsplits - routegadget


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It was cold at Greenbelt but not quite as cold as it was a couple weeks before at Wheaton. Still, I wore long underwear and didn’t feel too warm wearing it. There was a breeze blowing but it wasn’t blowing very hard and there were lots of places in the park where I didn’t feel it at all.

I walked the blue course, which is a step up for me. It was my first time attempting a blue course. It felt more like a long red than it did a blue. The size of the park probably had something to do with that. I don’t expect that I will be attempting the blue course at all meets from here on out but hopefully some of them.

None of the controls were extremely difficult to find. The 17th control gave me the most trouble and even that one wasn’t impossible to find. It just took a little bit of time for me to reorient myself to the terrain and approach the control from a different direction. There were a few controls that were more or less out in the open, which didn’t seem right to me for a blue course.

The only other thing to slow me down was an elderly couple that stopped me to ask for directions back to the Sweetgum Parking Lot. I tried to direct them using my map. They weren’t too far from the lot. I’m not sure I was entirely successful since the o-map didn’t have the name of roads or trails on it. The husband asked me a couple times if the trail I was suggesting they take was the Azalea Trail. I finally had to tell him I didn’t know because it wasn’t marked as such on my map.

I decided not to use a Garmin 205 gps watch. I thought about it but was still feeling a bit silly about what happened last week with the device. Maybe next time I will.

The best thing to come out of this meet was the prepay addition to the online preregistration. I was able to pay for the meet with my PayPal account. I hope they use this from now on. I hate having to bring cash to pay for the meet. This is a monumental improvement. Of course, now I’m wondering how much it costs the club in fees to have this option available.