Click here for my French Creek East 12/05, M21-45 map.

5 cm of snow on the ground. 5% climb. Rocky and physical. Low 9s/k. Not too bad. I forgot to take control descriptions. After reading them off the map and realising the codes followed an easy to remember system, I didn't need them. I wonder how often they actually provide information you need, provided the course printing registration is ok? Occasionally they do, I suppose, but I'll bet it is rare.

I wonder if orienteering in the snow is much different. I started 2nd or 3rd, and figure I only saw tracks about 20% of the time. I imagine they obviously help later starters. Of course they help your confidence, even if you are in contact and navigating fine, which I think I was, for the most part. I think it does something to visual processing and perspective. The land seems harder to read. It also throws off my timing. I don't pace count, but sort of have an internal timer of when I expect to see things. Because the running is slower, at least for me, things didn't seem to come up as fast.

I boomed or hesitated on 10 of the 12 controls. But I think the loss was in the 5-15 sec range in each case. It does add up, and I'm at a loss to explain it. Usually I make one big error rather than lots of small ones. Blame it on the snow. You'd think tracks of the runner(s) ahead of me would have led me to the control and led to the opposite effect, but it didn't work out that way except on 1 or 2 of them.

I banged my knee really bad. It would suck to have yet another injury now that I finally seem to be back around 100%. Hopefully the Ibuprofen IV will do the trick and I won't miss any training. I always seem to bang my left knee, and it is a mess. I wonder why I always bang the same knee?