ACT Long Distance Champs, 2nd. Enjoyed this race and was happy with my run although can't help but feel a bit of the what-ifs. The main story of this run was a near 7min lead at #4, only to lose most of it on the next leg and then slowly drop behind Marty to finish up about 1min down. I started nice and clean through the first, relatively easy, three controls. Took the opportunity to have a thorough look at the long #4. Picked a good right-hand route; in retrospect I could have run a little straighter without gaining any extra height. Hit #4 cleanly, catching Paul de Jongh 2min but he threw me a bit by going quickly through the control and out the wrong direction so I spent 10s double- and triple-checking the control code before leaving in a bit of a flap. #5 was another long one, probably with only one real route choice wide to the right with a technically easy but long climb. Some care was needed in the first part of the leg to avoid extra climb but not having my head on straight at that point I went up and down a fair bit, then also had a 15s miss attacking the control. With the long uphill this leg suited Marty and he was about 5min quicker over the 1.9km leg! I lost another 45s at #6 (bad contouring) so by the end of the 3km(!) #7 Marty was only 30s back - I was pleased to drop only 1:20 over 3km including a 75m climb out of the control and a gel while stopped at #6. More or less held my own from there to the end although I had one more big time loss on #9 where there was an unmapped fence. Everybody would have encountered it but they all seem to have coped with it better - my GPS says I took 45s to get my bearings and confirm that I hadn't done something really stupid.