CVOC 2018 1st Day Orienteering at Pocahontas State Park

CVOC held its 1st Day Orienteering Meet in conjunction with the 1st Day Hike event held at Pocahontas State Park. I needed to do well on this course since I did a horrible job at the last meet I was at before Christmas. I pulled the trigger for the Green (advanced ) long course of 5.4km. Below is my course map.

CVOC Advanced Course Map

Right or wrong I mark my map up. I use a yellow highlighter to mark the controls and the legs between each control. I also used a red marker to make a couple of notes for reference for myself. The green lines and arrows mark the route that I took and this has been done as a review for myself so you can see the route I took. 

You might have asked yourself why I might have taken the long road route vs the shorter way in the woods. The answer is that it's faster for me. Pocahontas has a lot of fallen trees in areas because of storms over the years. This can make off-trail travel a little tricky. I was pleased with my route choices and I was spot on my controls except for control 8 which is in an old dump site and I just happen to be on the wrong side of the junk pile.

Control 4 was my only in and back-out control. I was surprised when I got there that the control was a post and not a control flag. From control 6 to 7 I took a little longer route to use the intersection of the forest road to get a bearing before heading into the mountain bike trails. When I did the night course in the same area it was easy to fit the terrain to the map and be in the wrong area. That plan seems to work well for me.

One area that I need to work on is my cross-country running. I think I have the same level of navigation skills as the adventure racers but they are kicking my buttons with the riding. There’s always room for improvement! Well, I have a month to work on that before the next meet.