Thursday, April 11, 2013

Orienteering

I don’t do as much orienteering as I’d like, although I’ve done over 200 courses since 1992.  Orienteering, for those not familiar, is a sport where you use a map and compass to navigate a course as quickly as possible.  When I’m healthy I’m usually road racing and if I’m injured I’m not going to tempt fate with an o-meet, so in the last few years I haven’t been to too many meets.  One of my biggest problems at an O-meet is that I can run a lot faster than I can read and process the information on the map.  If I slow down a bit (or run a lot prior to the race to get myself tired) I seem to make fewer mistakes.  So with a race behind me I figured I’d hit two o-meets this past weekend.

I started the day with a 6 mile run on the Freeman Rail Trail with Petey and D-La.  After a short break I drove to Weston and did a three mile run that included the summit of Doublet hill.  The conservation land had numerous trails and the summit had a nice view of Boston.
 

After that I zipped over to Waltham and did another 1.5 miles while bagging the top of Feake hill.  It was ominously quiet there (it is in a cemetery) and there was a nice view of Boston and of the Charles River.
 

Finally I was off to the first o-meet of the day and after another 1.5 miles I was ready to start.  The Prospect hill map is a fairly small area, but it has a lot of hills and a big trail network.  It’d be hard to mess up too badly without the opportunity to bail to a trail or road and re-focus.  I bashed around in the woods and had a fun time.  I love the electronic punching system, you get your splits right at the finish and can watch updates on the monitor to see what place you got.  I was very surprised to find that I ended up in first place!

4.8k “Green” course

Name
Club
Time
1
Dave Dunham
UNO/NEOC
45:35
2
Jean-Charles Baritaux
NEOC
45:55
3
Giovanni Berlanda
CSU
46:48
4
Ian Finlayson
NEOC
47:11
5
Jeffrey Saeger
NEOC
50:34
6
Alex Jospe
CSU
51:37
7
Vadim Afonkin
CSU
51:42
8
Kristin Hall
NEOC
52:07
9
Tim Parson
NEOC-MQ
52:20
10
Martin Hawkes-Teeter
EMPO
52:55
 

I didn’t stick around very long after finishing at Prospect.  Off to Mine Falls in Nashua NH.  My very first orienteering lesson was on the Mine Falls map back in 1992 when Steve Tarry showed me the basics of orienterring.  I’ve also done a lot of running at Mine Falls and could probably figure out where most of the controls were without a map or compass.  I signed up and then did another mile to loosen up.  I was definitely feeling tired now and knew this would be a tough course with a lot of “fast” running.

The distance for any course is the optimum “straight line” distance but often you can’t go the shortest possible way.  At Mine Falls this is especially true with the various uncrossable features (Route 3, canals, Nashua River, smaller uncrossable streams).  I tried to keep an honest effort but felt very sluggish.  I only had trouble with one control which was hung near the edge of the circle (it should be in the center), otherwise I felt it went well.  The sunny day and warm temps had the park full of people.  One guy saw me zip into the woods, punch the control then come crashing out and he said ‘I haven’t seen you guys out here in a while”.  I thought that was kind of funny but orienteers with bright uniforms bashing through the woods probably present a memorable moment.

I again was surprised to find out I had the fastest time of the day.  I’ve run 202 o-meets since June 1992 and the two wins were my 69th, and 70th.  I haven’t won back-to-back meets since May of 2002 when I ran four o-meets (and won all four) in two days.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get out there a couple of more times this year.

6.8k “Red” course
Dave
Dunham
UNO
51:54
Alar
Ruutopold
UNO
56:40
Clinton
Morse
UNO
59:00
Jim
Arsenault
UNO
62:42
John
Magnus
UNO
68:38
Darrel
Scott
UNO
86:20
Peter
McGurkin

90:08

Johnson

172:00

Four meets in two days
Date
Map
Location

Course
Dist
Time
Pl
5/4/2002
Mine Falls
Nashua
NH
Orange
5.5
0:31:50
1
5/5/2002
Horn Pond
Woburn
MA
Orange
3
0:30:27
1
5/5/2002
Lake Park
Worcester
MA
Orange
3.3
0:27:55
1
5/5/2002
College Woods
Durham
NH
Green
4.5
0:49:33
1

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