This was the Night-O during DVOA's Hickory Run Training Camp. I was pretty excited about it and decided to do the long course and treat it, at least somewhat, as a race. For an added challenge, I had the weak, crappy light with me, and Alli had the good one on her intermediate course (which she rocked!)
I started out with a lot of hesitation, trying to remember how to orienteer, and blew 2 minutes on #1, due to (a) stopping short and (b) stopping to revamp how my lamp was attached to my head and how the battery was carried.
After #1 it went much better, and I was very pleased to run pretty cleanly on legs 2-10, albeit excruciatingly slowly. I got tired towards the end of the course, and shed a bunch of time on 11, first getting stuck in the green on the way out to the road, then being slow on the road, and finally taking a stupid attack through a green swamp into the control.
Still, I was very pleased with the race and had a really fun time. I ended up 3rd, almost 8 minutes behind Sergei Ryzhkov, but managing to scalp Wyatt in the process.
Being out of shape is very frustrating, and I am still not at the point where it's just a matter of training more. The core muscles on the right side of my body are not used to working at all, and so that side is much weaker than the left. There is still a lot of work ahead before I can start training for real, and I just need to be patient. Still, finding controls in the woods at night is so much fun!!
Results:
http://www.dvoa.org/events/results/html/rslt16/hic...
RouteGadget:
http://www.dvoa.org/cgi/gadget/reitti.cgi?act=map&...