NEOC held an event on Thompson Island last weekend, the home of the Outward Bound program here in Boston. I didn't realize that the Boston Harbor islands were anything more than glorified trash heaps, but I guess I thought wrong. Thompson Island is actually fairly large, with enough terrain for a 4km orienteering race. It was billed as a sprint, but any course that takes me 30 minutes is not exactly a sprint, in my mind. My scanner is broken, and I've lost my camera, otherwise I would share the map - it was hardly a technical course, due to a lack of forest, but it was certainly interesting enough, with a mix of open fields, park/buildings, and salt marsh. Since we were running around low tide, it was possible to cut straight through some of the salt marshes, although the mud was squishy and slimy enough that running through it was slow and mucky. And now my shoes smell like some sea creature died in there.
The results were up quickly, and I ended up 5th for the day, first woman. Most importantly, ahead of Ed! It was definitely a runner's sort of course, although still possible to make mistakes, and with the hot sun and lack of wind, I was just not running fast enough to pick off Bill or Giovanni - I can't come close to John or Ross. The far side of the island was the sheltered side, and there was a long, straight, sunny stretch of running between control 6 and 7 where I really thought I was going to melt. Or have my head explode. And to think that it was actually cooler out there than on the mainland... I'm ready for this heat wave to break.
In completely unrelated news, I attempted to start work on the masters stuff at Amherst this week, and it looks like we're pushing stuff back even further, until we can get a meeting of the right people to talk about my thesis, before I start work on it. This gives me another week or two or three of vacation, so I'd best use my time wisely and go back outside to play!
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