orienteering race (Easter long) 1:50:35 [3] 9.5 km (11:38 / km) +255m 10:16 / km
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
I forgot the golden rule today, and ballsed up the first control by 4 minutes because I wasn't sure of my bearing down the spur and across the creek, then followed various men upstream to their termite mound rather than downstream to mine. Then when I did head in the correct direction I stopped short, misreading the vegetation, even though I saw Zoe (2 min) heading in the right direction, it didn't look right to me and so I went back to the control I'd just been at! Bit slow on the uptake, am I...
Also a bit slow in the legs; it wasn't a good hamstring day and so I couldn't seem to lift my legs over anything, and kept tripping on the tussocky grass. Very slow through the first few rocky controls (also it took me about a week to unfold my 1: 10 000 map to punch manually at the first of the 'failed' units) and decided to go fairly straight on the long leg through the middle, and down the correct spur, which wasn't a given. Shannon came through me just before the control and she poured me a drink there, which was very kind. I think we were both glad of each other's presence when we saw the weird stuffed shirts hanging in the trees!
Very slow across the up-and-down hillsides to 8, but really this course didn't have much climb and once I'd done the long leg to 9 the rest just required very careful bearings. Not sure about the positioning of the termite mound at 10, but at least I saw other people heading for it. And the tail of the course was fine, plus mostly downhill.