Thomass TOC Winter Orienteering Race

Location: Greenwood Conservation Area
Host Club: Toronto Orienteering - that's us!
Weather: -16 °C and sunny
Terrain: forest and open meadow, shallow snow, lots of ice sheets, some climb into the river valleys

Format: Point-to-Point with 2 Score-O Thomass Boxes, where competitors drop a number of controls corresponding to their age and gender (I dropped 2 of 6 each time)
 - mass start and (more-or-less) mass finish, with winners ranked according to whoever crosses the finish line first, regardless of age or gender
- points are awarded to clubs, where the winner gets 50, 2nd finisher gets 49, etc.

I had a fast, clean run with only minor errors.  That said, I didn't make the best route choices all the time, but once I made a choice, I got it right.  And I felt physically amazing!

Route Link

The crazy part was the start, which was a flagged course to Control 1, and all the elite guys took off in a pack along the ~800m winding trail.  And I was right behind them!  I couldn't believe it, but there was quite a gap behind me - I was the lead woman runner!  So thrilling!


I was really confident with choosing the right terrain to cut across instead of playing it safe and going around.  Then again, it wasn't a technically challenging course.  But it's good to get the confidence up.

My friend CB managed to recruit several carloads of newbies to try orienteering, and in the end, we had to wait a few hours for everyone to finish before heading back to the city.  There's nothing like bonding while standing around in frigid temperatures!

I will update my place when the official results go up in a few days, but the winners came in at ~51mins, and I finished in 1:10 on my watch.  So pretty darn good.  I hope to snag quite a few points for my club.

--Distance: 9K
--Duration: 70mins