Beaumont 2017

I took my off day today since I knew I wouldn't have much (any) time to study. After running 10 miles and having breakfast with Fleet Feet, I shot over to the John Smerek O-meet. This is the annual scout championship meet. It was initiated and directed for many years by John and named in his honor when he passed away (around 20 years ago, though I don't remember the exact year).

Anyway, since it's all about the scouts, most of which don't know a whole lot about orienteering, the SLOC meet is a bit of a side item. Still, meet director David Fisher always manages to put together a decent course for those of us who appreciate our annual opportunity to run on this map (Beaumont is owned by the Boy Scouts, so we only get this one chance a year to use the map.)

Given how little nav training I've been doing, I was pleasantly surprised with how well I ran. Beaumont is pretty easy terrain, since it's dominated by some pretty big ridges. Still, if you're running it full speed, you have to be reading accurately and, for the most part, I was.

My legs were pretty trashed after the first few ridges, but that's basically what I was going for. It seemed that hammering over some hills after already running would be good prep for Boston. You can see from my routes that I started looking for ways to take the edge off the steepness in the last bit of the course.

I didn't bother numbering the circles; the course starts at the triangle and finishes at the double circle.