Thomass STARS Race Report

Today I raced in the Thomass STARS orienteering race, along with fellow Raid The Fridge members Roy and Chris.  Roy and I had done a bunch of these races before, Chris had only done one before.  Despite that we all registered individually, and each were issued Sport Ident chips, we ran as a team.  I acted as navigator, as Raid The Fridges main navigator had gotten married the day before and could not race today.

Chris, Roy, and I standing in front of the finish.

More of the same.

The course was mostly flat, with some small steep hills thrown in.  It was mostly on a well mapped set of trails, with some bushwhacking through open forest.  The trails themselves were frozen solid for the most part, with a few mucky sections near the numerous swamps.  The frozen dirt was excellent as far as traction goes, and my new Vibram Treksports were great on all terrain encountered during the race, with the exception of the ice.

The ice proved problematic.  It covered some sections of trail, making cornering treacherous, and running slow at best.  The people who had metal spikes in or on their shoe seemed okay, but we slid around.  On one especially slippery section I fell.  We were running along fine, in a single file line, when it happened.  I promptly found myself on the ground, and heard sliding behind me.  Chris (next in line) had witnessed my sudden loss of standing, and had slid to a stop (an upright one).  Roy was at the back of the line, and was fine.
At the end of the race I found that I had done a better job of injuring my self than I thought:

"It's okay" says Chris, "you iced it right away when you fell".

My navigation this race was far better than my footwork.  We hit all of the CPs, except for one of the two that we had the option of skipping.

We started the race by running a short, mandatory loop, that took us past where we would have to turn on our way to CP 1.  Following this loop, we made our way to CPs 1, 2, and 3, in quick succession.  On our way to CP 4, I made a the only error of the race.  We overshot by a bit (our standard mistake in orienteering races).  Luckily, I realized my error and we backtracked and found the checkpoint, losing only about two minutes.  After this we collected CP 5 and 6, then started the Thomass Box.

The Thomass Box CPs were in a rough circle, scattered over the whole course.  We opted for a clockwise direction, as it allowed us to scout out future CPs.  After collecting CP A-E (but not F, Roy and Chris thought it was too far away) we went back to CP 7, which was conveniently located right across the road from 6.

From CP 7 we went towards 8, along the same trail we used when looking for A.  It was here that talking the whole race paid off.  I was leading us in the general direction of where it was, and telling Roy and Chris to look for a depression in the ground.  Before I knew it, Chris was running off towards a depression to our right, that I hadn't seen.  I find it helpful to talk through my navigation, both so team mates know what to look for (eg. a trail that turns right, after we pass a swamp) and so that they can point out my mistakes.  CP 9 was very easy for us to find, as we had ran across it earlier.

After CP 9, the course designer obviously decided that there hadn't been enough climbing during the race, and opted to put all the remaining CPs on hills.  The two advantages too this were that you could sometimes see the next CP, from the hilltop you were currently on, and that I got to test the new Vibrams on hills.

After CP 12, we ran along a short section of trail to the finish.  When we reached the trail junction near the finish (which we had visited 3 times by this point) Roy and Chris told me too run ahead.  So I did, and finished shortly before a small herd of runners came pounding up the trail.

Overall it was a great race, very well set up and lots of fun.  We figured out that we ran about 8km (it would have been closer to 9km if we had added the Thomass box CP).  It took us an hour from start to finish.  They had cookies at the finish...