Orienteering (Oz Champs Long) 1:59:56 [3] 16.0 km (7:30 / km)
shoes: x talon 190.2
Just about died of shock when I turned over my first 1:15000 map in a few years. Took my time through the first couple and got them fine, but drifted off one trying to find a runnable line on the way to three, and by the time I worked it all out and came into the control from behind, Craig had punched and was on his way out. Caught up pretty quickly and alternated between tagging along with I'm, and trying to pull away a bit when we headed up hills. All I managed to do was get far enough in front agh we would be back together once I had missed the control at the end, or I would be a bit behind and have to lift further rot get back on his tail.
I got sloppy heading over the top of hill into 13, and when Craig punched and ran off down the hill without me seeing, I could make enough sense of things to figure out where the control was, but just couldn't convince myself to run up the hill to the right spot. Dropped nearly two minutes there.
Ran hard through the next couple, but somehow missed the control in the thick stuff at 15 three times, despite an attack point all of about 100m away. Another 4 minutes binned, and motivation waning badly.
Dropped another minute or more at 17 when I got the direction off the top of the hill wrong and wandered around in some unmapped rock.
Poor route to 19 and energy pretty much all gone and heading to 20, the train of seeded runners started to go through me, with on the the Danes going past and disappearing at a rate of knots.
One control later, Robbie P and Tomas came through, but they both appeared to be struggling physically as well, and I dig deep enough to keep then in sight through the last 7 controls to the end, helped by them bouncing around a little in the circle.
A bit disappointed to have run about 10 minutes slower than I should have, knowing I could have been about 8 minutes quicker by just pocketing my map and rolling Craig as closely as possible, but that wouldn't have felt terribly satisfying.
3rd West Australian behind Tomas and Craig. Beat all the Victorians (one mispunched) and nobody else had a full team, although we would have beaten ACT even if Lachy Dow was official), so Nomads won the men's NOL for the day.