After a gorgeous Saturday, with temperatures close to 80, the Sunday didn’t look promising: rainy and cold. But, just like the last time, the rain stopped around noon, just in time for the start.

I could not leave the church until 1:30PM, which meant I was only able to start around 1:50. I was nervous I won’t be able to finish a green course, but Nadya (the course director) encouraged me to do it anyway. And I am happy I did.

This is the result. I timed myself too (I kept the splits for each control), but I refused to look at the total time. I thought I will be back in less than an hour, I was very surprised and disappointed at the finish line that I was 23 minutes over an hour (15 minutes after the 3PM closing time). I don’t exactly know why I thought I did it faster, I did try to run all the way through. The course was beautiful, it also helped that I started to know Umstead South a bit better and some controls were a deja-vu (especially control 7 on the cliff, but also the steep river bank, control 8 – I am positive we’ve had controls there before – it’s easy to find out since I have the maps for the past 2 years). (update: those were controls 40 and 53 from the Umstead 911 Score Event)

Other surprises: Green course was 5.6km, it’s usually 5.1km; for the first time I notice there was a Blue course as well (8.7km) – not that I could do it in the timeframe I had, plus it would definitely be long. Nadya estimated 10 minutes per kilometer in orienteering, I seem to be at 15.

On the way back home I noticed how gorgeous the woods are in the fall. It’s probably the best month to do orienteering, cool enough and with less vegetation, plus the foilage.