View Dave Goes Orienteering 2012-13 in a larger map
The weather was great but my luck wasn't. I got off to a shaky start and things just got worse from there. If I could have had another hour then I might have been able to finish the blue course but by the time I threw in the towel I knew time was running short and the responsible thing to do was admit defeat.
I had a little bit of trouble finding the second control. I thought I was headed right towards it but when I wasn't able to find it on the first attempt I started to head south toward road. Before I reached the road I spotted it.
My trip from the 2nd to the 3rd control was a catastrophe, even though I eventually did find the 3rd control. On the first attempt I left the road in the wrong place. I ended up wandering around in the wrong part of the course for a while before heading back to the road. On the second attempt I found it within a few minutes. If I had just taken a little more time figuring out where to leave the road the first time around it might not have taken me 53+ minutes to find the 3rd control.
I didn't have quite as much trouble finding the 5th control. I think my confidence was still a bit wobbly after my experience with the 3rd control.
I wish I had a good explanation for why it took me so long to find the 9th control. After 5 I found 6, 7, and 8 without any trouble. From 8 to 9 should have been a straight shot. Instead I ended up wandering all over the place. First I thought I had not gone far enough and started to double back, then I thought I might have wandered off in the wrong direction. I'm tempted to blame the guy who stopped me for directions to a control that wasn't on the blue course but it was all me, even if he did distract me long enough to throw off my concentration on the task at hand.
I honestly thought that the 9th and 10th controls would be closer together than they were. I also wandered off in the wrong direction at first, and didn't check the clue on the map. The 10th control was in a big hole, which is what the clue indicated. I walked right past it once before I circled back around and found it. Still, it took me over 11 minutes to find it. Not good.
Eventually I had to give up. It was getting late. I had been out on the course for just over 3 hours when I found the 13th control. I wasn't feeling terribly confident that I would be able to find the 14th control relatively quickly so I just called it quits after 13. I got back with 20 minutes to spare.
On the whole it wasn't a great outing for me but it didn't feel like a complete disaster.
Course: Blue [19 controls; 9.6 km; 310 m]
Time: 3:21:40 - AttackPoint - WinSplits
DNF (gave up after finding the first 13 controls)
Actual Distance: 13.36 km / 8.3 miles
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