Run race ((orienteering)) 1:40:01 [4] *** 12.8 km (7:49 / km) +500m 6:32 / km
spiked:32/37c
NOL long at Chinamans Flat. No-one was really sure what to expect with this one - it was a very fast area when it was first used for the 1995 WOC trials (where I had one of my best runs on the Saturday to run myself into the team, then almost ran myself out of it on the Sunday), but it was unclear how it might have grown back after the 1998 fire - as it turned out, quite a bit of bracken (tough in the mining areas, OK otherwise) but not too bad elsewhere.
I might have got away with running while sick yesterday but it wasn't to be today. Felt horrible in the early stages and spent quite a bit of the first loop seriously considering pulling out at the end of it. I'd been dropped immediately and was left to pick off a few that fell off the back. Got caught in some nasty bracken at the end of the first loop and made a couple of small mistakes at the start of the second, then started to feel a bit better after settling into a sort-of-bunch with Mark Gregson, David Brownridge and Reuben. Kept plugging away on the much longer last loop (despite a stupid but small error on the first control of the last loop), and finally started to feel reasonable in the last 20 minutes (this might have had something to do with the fact that the last 20 minutes didn't have any meaningful hills). Mark fell away there, and I got a break on Reuben on a route choice to the third-last. David wobbled on that control but not quite by enough for me to get through him, and then outran me at the end.
In one sense it's good to be able to fight this one out, but the total return from the weekend was zero points - and it's certainly frustrating to have been sick for both my race weekends this year. Hopefully Easter will have something more to offer. Impressed by the depth of the junior men on display this weekend (which is another way of saying that a lot of them beat me).
By the way, did anyone notice that today's map was printed at roughly 1:11000? (must have been the printing as the course lengths were right).