Run February 19, 2005
I'm not quite sure why it took David and I 8 years to try a team orienteering event together, but it obviously falls in the "really good idea" bucket. We've done navigation sections together as part of adventure races, but since you only get one set of maps, it wasn't so obvious how well we work together.
We arrived separately since I was staying in Chicago for the weekend. When I get there, David has already sketched out a preliminary route. It looks ugly - lots of doglegs - but I'm only able to find a few small improvements. The route ends with a road run of nearly two miles. To make that pay off, we'll have to hammer it pretty hard. One thing is for sure: the winning time will be well under the 6-hour limit.
Competition map: North, South.
Just before the start, meet director Kathy Bullard calls us all together for some instructions. As she counts down to the start I realize David is nowhere around. David always seems to be doing something right before the start of these things, even today when he was the first person to register. As she says "go" David pops out from behind his van and we head off.
On the way to our first control we are passed by Michael Eglin and Dimitry Perchonok. I expect that they will be our primary competition. Michael is as fast as we are and a better navigator on a true orienteering map. This map is a touched up version of USGS so our experience on rough maps evens the odds. I don't know whether Dimitry will help or slow him down.
Although the temperature is in the high 20's, the ground is frozen so solid it is like running on concrete. Make that concrete covered with ice, sticks, and leaves. Footing is bad in the valleys, worse on ridges, and nearly impossible on hillsides.
We get to the fourth control at the same time as Eglin/Perchonok and open up a slight lead heading up the hill. On the other side of the ridge, we drop into a steep reentrant. We can hardly go three steps without slipping and bruising something. Our adversaries take the power line cut down to the road and beat us to the next control by about 30 seconds. A few things are becoming clear:
- We really should have worn spikes.
- We are going to need to pick it up if we're going to get rid of Eglin/Perchonok (who are wearing spikes).
- Spikes would be a good thing.
- We need to give excessive preference to routes that follow trails and fields so we can run fast without spikes.
- It sure would be nice to have some spikes.
After the fifth control (25), we head to 19 while the others go to 23. We crank up the pace on the route from 19 to 23 (mostly trail and field) and continue to push to 20. Just as we are getting there, we see Michael and Dimitry leaving the control. Encouraged by the fact that we are nearly a control ahead, we push even more.
Since the out and back strategy on trails and fields is working so well, we switch the order of 13 and 14, making 15-14-13 one big dogleg. 13-12-11 also becomes a dogleg as we stay in the valley rather than going over the ridge between 12 and 11.
We're running about as fast as I can go for this distance. Although we are covering a lot of extra ground to avoid the hillsides, we're still doing 8:00/Km against the straight line. We have one little boom at 8 as we both drift right of the control. We recover quickly and the error is less than two minutes.
Our most radical departure from the red line comes at control 4 where we decide to take the road all the way around to 3. This would have been great if the road hadn't been covered in ice. We have to take tiny steps as we half run/half slide down the hill.
When we get to 2 (our last control that requires any real navigation) we spend a few seconds taking in the view off the cliffs. Part of this is because it really is a nice view and part is because we know what comes next - the road run to the finish.
David scrambles down to the road ahead of me and I tell him to get moving since he has the punch card. I follow about 30 meters behind. If any further evidence was needed as to how evenly matched we are, we run the entire leg up to 10 spaced exactly like that. As David punches 10, I catch up and we run into the finish together.
Our strategy has paid off huge. We are the only team to use the long road run. Avoiding the hillsides near the end put us way out in front. Michael and Dimitry show up 43 minutes later and the third place team of Maricel Olaru and Natalia Babeti is nearly an hour back. Five teams and one solo competitor manage to sweep the course in under six hours.
Kathy is a little disappointed that we got done in just over 3 hours. I don't know that you could make the course much longer without adding a lot of controls. The area just isn't that big. I suggest that if she really wants to increase the distance, she could do a map exchange.
While I would have enjoyed a longer course, I also found it great fun to hammer full-on for three hours. We certainly wouldn't have been able to hold that pace for six. I felt like David could have gone a bit faster without me, although he might have had to slow down to navigate. At any rate, it was fun to put the Buckley-Frei Death Match aside for a day and work together. So much fun that I think we should do it more often than once every 8 years.
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