Last rogaining

Yesterday was the last rogaining of the season. The organizers mapped out a special sprint course downtown on a much smaller scale than usual, and instead of picking and choosing which control points to run to, we had to get all of them (20). Here's what my route looked like, including the extra loop around the river I had to do because I missed two control points. Hmph.

(I also had to pause to talk to some passersby - a dad with a few kids - who wanted to know what we were doing and how they could participate!)

On last night's special downtown course, I did 3.33km with an average pace of 7:38 minutes per km - paces tend to be slower than a regular training run since you're stopping at each point to write down the answer to the clue, and also navigating and, well, getting lost. For comparison, here are a few maps from other courses this season. Distances range from 4.6 - 8.5km for the hour of rogaining.

I'm sorry to say goodbye to street-o until next season, but my injury from earlier this winter is flaring up again, so it's just as well. I'm already looking forward to starting next season with some experience behind me - this sport is a combination of skills. You can't JUST run fast, or JUST be good at navigating, or JUST be a good route strategist. It's all of those things, and I hope to be able to improve next season.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that Jeremy and I ran last night's rogaining course separately (due to taking turns with Sterling), and yet managed to finish within two seconds of each other's time. Jeremy got lost and then had to loop back to get a control point he missed; I didn't get lost but also had to do an extra loop. So on the official results, I'm sure it looks like we ran together since we are listed next to each other. But in reality we were just so synchronized that we made the same mistakes and finished in the same time!