Here is the Canadian Champs '07, Sprint M21 map, and here are my routes.

Here is the Canadian Champs '07, Middle M21 map, and here are my routes.

Not much to write, life is too hectic, plus mapsurfer.com is presently in pieces, so I'm using this entry for testing, which also explains why it is so late. At least the maps were up, which I guess is all that matters. (And the terrain photos aren't anything; they are just for testing the new scripts).

Anyway, fine event. I had a good sprint, screwing up only #13. Was right there, just didn't see the bag. Wasn't hidden; the fact that I was right there doesn't imply I knew I was right there. J-J was also there, and he may have blocked my view as it really was in plain sight. We really need more of these sorts of sprints in North America so I don't have to travel 3000K.

As for the middle, extremely difficult, but fun terrain. I spiked all but three of the controls, which I think is saying something, unfortunately the ones I boomed (#1, #5, #10) were all train wrecks, for an average of about 7 minutes lost. Ouch. A clean run would have been 43, which wouldn't have been bad. I'm not good enough in this sort of terrain for a clean run; probability of booming is higher than average, and penalty for doing so is catastrophic. I may have been able to walk the course in 43 minutes (10 min/K), but I still easily could have boomed in doing so, plus, what fun would that be?

Why was it hard? Highly technical and poor viz. The fatal mix. Also, I wouldn't describe the forest as slow, but the mobility wasn't that great -- meaning it was easy to go fast, but not necessarily easy to go fast exactly where you wanted to, and tiny loss of contact or miss could be catastrophic. Also, I did not feel the contour features were the right shape in many cases, which made the relocation penalties even higher. Alot of really good orienteers boomed #10; I was treasure hunting with a who's who of Canada's finest. I bailed to the trail and reattacked on my own, not sure if I came out ahead or behind of the better orienteers.