Orienteering race 55:35 [4] 5.6 km (9:56 / km) +210m 8:22 / km
shoes: Brooks Cascadia 3
Easter Day 1. Started off really well from the maps to the start triangle and made a simple plan and did it well for 75% of the leg but then I couldn't make sense of the how the rocks were mapped plus I was having some problems reading the contour detail around the control. By the time I worked it out and found a way to get down off the large bare rock I had lost about 20-30 seconds. Ran well half way to 2 then thought the boulder was more on top of the spur so moved right but the crappy vegetation meant I couldn't see the boulder and went too far down the spur. Couldn't make anything fit so decided to run back to near 1 and relocate. Nailed the control the second time by staying lower but had lost two minutes. Ran well through to 6 but lost some time on the short leg to 7 when I turned in a fraction early and missed seeing the boulder in the green and everything just looked flat and the same, so another 30 seconds gone. Pulled up just short of 8 and again wasn't interpretting the map well - I saw the rock which had the control but I thought it was a boulder and I was looking for a rock face, so lost another 30 seconds or so before I went and checked. Then I really lost the plot on 9. My plan was to run past 4 and use it to attack the control. I was nearly at 4 when I started thinking "Oh, I should be going to 8 not 4 so I swung away to the left, but a bit too much and the next thing I knew I was climbing up some rocks about 100m south of 9 (I thought 9 was on a spur, but it was actually a gully). Worked out what I had done fairly quickly and headed for 9 but got pushed off course by the green again and ended up missing the control and continued on to be stopped by the rocky hill to the north west of 9. Decided to just run to the open area and use the fence corner to attack the control from the wrong side - this worked perfectly but I had kissed goodbye to 3 minutes. I was happy with my route choice to 10 which was just a little bit to the right of the straight line and using the bare rocks but I just missed reading the rock well at the very end so lost about 30 seconds by the time I swung back around the control. I was careful to 11 and ran well to 12. From there to the finish was just straight, with not much going wrong navigationally but I should have pushed a bit harder with my running.
I finished in 3rd place but nearly 6 minutes behind Bernard in 1st and 2.5 minutes behind Russell in 2nd. An ok result but a really poor effort with 7-8 minutes wasted. A really good area though, much harder than I was expecting especially after the prologue.