orienteering race (Aust Long Champs) 1:42:29 [4] 10.4 km (9:51 / km) +220m 8:55 / km
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
I figured I only had about 80 minutes in my legs because I haven't run for longer than that in, oh, months - and so my aim was to get as far through the course as possible before I ran out of legs. Hoped that the terrain would be pretty similar to Boboyan where I'd had a reasonably clean run in May, and so it proved to be. The first few controls were a bit too easy, I thought, especially when I could see the flag from 50 m away; but I guess you did have to be on exactly the right bearing in order to achieve this.
Began reeling in girls who had started in front of me (having all the Aust champs races as WREs means limited randomness in the starting order and predisposes to the possibility of trains forming - at least there have been impressively big fields at these races, but in WA next year if the numbers are significantly less I'll be suggesting a random draw even for the WREs) and went through Amy and Sallyanne between 7 & 8, then to my surprise Belinda popped out from behind a rock at 11, and we were around each other for the next few controls. I got ahead but inhaled a wattle blossom and had a coughing fit so she gained again. We went different ways on the longer leg to 15 then converged on it along with Briohny and Katelyn, meaning that a slow train formed on the 2km leg to 16, the very end of which we all stuffed up. I can see now that I came around the hill ever so slightly high, but when I did drop 30m I was still expecting to find the control on a small spur, not the side of a gully as it turned out to be. So that's how I lost time on Bun again; probably only a minute but she & Briohny & Laurina got away.
Hanny came through me & Katelyn as we got to the farmland, which was about the point that I died. Katelyn was powering up the hills but it was as though someone had switched off the power supply to my legs. Even Kathryn coming through wasn't enough for me to be able to make them move! I was otherwise pretty happy with my run; although others complained about the junk on the ground I was just glad that it wasn't as rocky and tussocky underfoot as Badja. So on reflection, this weekend I did better than I'd expected in the long and worse than expected in the sprint, but the net effect was still a sense of satisfaction, maybe because I do like to run on new areas and there are none of these in SA.
Pancakes at Bredbo afterwards, with Geoff of course, reminiscing about how we stopped there after Aust Champs 2001. He had come down from Sydney to catch up with me and spent the weekend ferrying around Susanne, Kate, Zoe, Hania and got a speeding fine on the Monaro Highway for his pains...