http://www.sju.edu/~sfillebr/TeamBenefit/MainPage.htm.
For me, the highlight of the event was to run on the map from the 1993 World Champs. The map is Surebridge and is in the middle of Harriman State Park. Harriman is about an hour north of Manhattan (and even closer to Mary's hometown of New City). The terrain is fantastic -- contour details, lots of rocks and cliffs, distinct areas of dense vegetation. Surebridge was used for the classic final event. While I ran the 1993 World Champs, I didn't run the classic event (and if I had I doubt I would have qualified for the final!).
My plan was to try to find a pace that felt easy and not to push in the early parts of the course. If I had anything left, I'd push the pace (or at least the effort) over the last third of the course. This approach seemed to work pretty well. I began slowly (a poor route and a minute parallel error at the first control meant Dan made up two minutes on me by the first control!). After the slow beginning...I maintained a slow pace. But, I also had a clean run and as I kept going my running became smoother. The footing in Harriman is very rocky. If you're not used to running there, it is very difficult to run smoothly. You end up stumbling around and wasting a lot of energy to go slowly. Once you get used to the terrain, you can keep up a decent pace without wasting so much energy. As I progressed around the course, my running got smoother. I haven't looked at my splits, but I think my pace was probably increasing.
Any other reprots from OK (or PTOC) long-O' runners?
-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), November 02, 1999