Orienteering race 50:10 [4] 5.5 km (9:07 / km) +210m 7:40 / km
shoes: Brooks Cascadia 3
Easter Day 2. I decided that if I did nothing else I was going to orienteer well to the first control and over-read my map. I did and nailed it. I decided to just drop and take the easy running along the bottom of the hill to 2 and was quite happy reading my way back up the hill to the control. Mucked around a bit on 3 by not going straight and getting into the big gully just beyond the control, but lost about 30 seconds by the time I got back to the little gully. Just fast open running until half way to 7 then just dropped some gears and ran slowly up the hill - it is nice to be able to run all the way even if slowly. I came off the big bare rock in the right place going to 8 but then decided to just read my way into the control but drifted to the right so I missed seeing the gully and ended up in the gully to the south east where there were two boulders - the fact that these were next to a large bare rock made me think I was in the wrong spot. I relocated quickly and probably lost about 30-40 seconds in the end. I ran well through to 11 and half way to 12 but then read the control as being in the forest so when I got to the circle I ran into the trees and couldn't find the boulders. When I realised that the boulders were on the edge of the clearing I found the control ok but had lost over a minute! My only other problem was on 15 where I misread the contour. I thought the rock face was half way down the slope and cut in from the barerock to the north but the contours were a bit obscured by the control circle and green and boulder clusters so lost another 30 seconds having to clamber back up to the control.
I had the fastest time on the day but I was only just in front of the Man from Hong Kong, and Bernard. Did manage to pull back some time on Russell and I scraped into 2nd place overall but only by 12 seconds as Russ had another steady run. Looking forward to tomorrow and an early start rather than the late one of today.