Thursday, October 21, 2010

U.S. Corn Maze Orienteering Championships


A couple weeks ago, Peter and Gail and Ali and I were eating dinner at Bub's BBQ, which is near Mike's Corn Maze in Sunderland. Peter mentioned that it would be really fun to do some orienteering in the corn maze, and we were all like ha, ha, funny, good idea (but that'll never happen). And then he went and got the owners all excited about it and turned it into the US champs in corn maze orienteering (if that isn't facetious I'm not sure what is), put up a website, acquired e-punching, ran a contest for a logo, and twenty-five goofballs showed up on a Wednesday afternoon for the US Corn Maze Championships. There were two courses, the classic and the sprint. Both were great fun.



Cristina, Caroline, Ali and I dressed up in plaid shirts, which matched quite nicely with my sexy spandex from Linnea. Having giant diaper-like bandages on my butt doesn't help with the whole running motion, but as Boris caught on camera, I was able to get moving pretty well before the chafing caught up to me. The nurses weren't able to tell that I'd been running when they changed my bandage on Thursday, so I think I avoided any serious consequences for having some good clean fun in a corn maze.



Peter had set some tricky courses, and I made plenty of mistakes, but so did everyone else. I was hoping to break into the "red group" of Boris, Cristina, Ali, and Greg, but I missed it by just over a minute. Still beat all the old folks, so at least that is something! Stupid butt. Below are the first and second maps of the classic champs (distance: 1.5mi).



After we finished the classic distance (Results), we ran the sprint, which was all of 300 meters long, but devious. I blew #1 by 45 seconds or so, and my chance at a good placement was gone, but I had an awesome time.


Afterwards we all retired to Peter and Gail's house for delicious dinner, a birthday celebration, and boggle late into the night. What a good way to spend an evening! I can't wait for the next corn maze orienteering event, this is getting serious.

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