Orienteering race 46:38 [3] 3.4 km (13:43 / km)
ahr:118 max:142 shoes: X-Talon 190
Aust. Middle Champs at Foxes Lair, GPS 5.0kms. Don't think my mind was up to this after yesterday. Ran down the watercourse from the start, then veered too far left at the bottom and into the wrong group of rocks. Panicking a little with Hoopy only 2 mins behind, I knew what I'd done, but couldn't resist checking out several boulders in this wrong location. Hoopy appeared just as I found the control, but he was looking too far to the East. 2 mins and a bit lost. Wasn't clean into 2 and 3 either, losing close to a minute on these. Hit 4 ok, but then disaster, running to 5 I crossed a road but then started looking before crossing a second road. Found a control after a minute or two, and thought I'd identified the feature (actually could have identified it as my no. 9 if I'd checked the code against my descriptions, but failed to do that), and kept searching. After another minute I realised that I needed to be on the other side of a road, saw it in the distance and ran over and crossed it. Unfortunately I hadn't looked at my compass or registerd the fact that a powerline should have been on the other side. More fruitless searching brought me to another control whose code I should have checked (I would have found that it was my no. 8). Eventually decided to do what I should have done in the first place - run to a road and relocate. Found that I was 400m N of the control, so ran up the road, along the powerline and in - 10.5 mins slower than the fastest and 63/64 on the leg.
The next few controls were ok (had been to two of them already), but I hadn't finished yet. At 11, I searched the wrong rocks again - probably the same ones I had been in at 1 because it was quite close, 2.5 mins lost, then I face-planted on the way out of the control. 7 short legs left, didn't lose any significant time, but wasn't fast.
