US InterScholastic Champs

A couple weekends ago I went down to the US Interscholastic championships in Washington State with my family and Tori. All in all it was a great weekend but man the woods were thick! Now she said in her post that some of the west coasters would just scoff at the woods I want to assure everyone that this is not true haha. This was possibly the thickest woods I've ever run in. Though this did make for an interesting and challenging new terrain type. I even found my self completely suspended from the ground with absolutely no way of moving forward a couple of times. Needless to say it was a bit of a shock to the system. This was the first orienteering I had really done all year (except for sprints and our club races) and it couldn't have been more different from the dryer or more open terrains I had been used to last summer, spending all my time happy, actually being to run, through the woods up north in the Yukon and over in Poland. Here's a picture from the event, sort of the closest thing I could find to a picture of the terrain.
Just imagine it like that except usually more wet and sallal-ey. Don't get me wrong I love my coastal rainforests but I came out of this one with some serious scratches.

All in all my races didn't go very well, but I still managed to find good legs and sections of each one that I was quite pleased with. So for the first races of the season and my first official M21. competition I'm happy enough. It is tough to go from that to not having any for another month again though. I am really excited for this season to get going and the summer to start. I always forget how awesome orienteering can be and how much I love it over the winter when all I get to do is run around city parks in the rain and the dark. Now I'm sunburnt and scratched up and I couldn't have had more fun (expect maybe if I'd won :). Here's the map from the first day. Have a look; maybe see what you would have done.

They might as well have printed them on green paper.