Linear orienteering race 1:36:03 [5] *** 13.05 km (7:22 / km)
spiked:5/17c shoes: inov8 mudclaw 270
Southern Orienteering Championships 2012, inc. UK Cup race RETIRED / FAILED
A real shocker; what felt like a return to my bad old days of 20-30 minute errors. Maybe it was leg and brain tiredness, maybe it was the shock of going from sprinting on a clear 1:5,000 map of the City to a dark 1:15,000 map of Epping East, I don't know. Even looking back at the map now, I'm trying to work out what went so wrong that I spent 25 minutes on the first control, utterly floundering in the small area of the map it was in. Even before eventually finding it I'd pretty much decided that I'd quit - I'd claim that this was due to my altruistic desire to get back to the finish in time to help, as scheduled but to be honest it was more to avoid embarrassment; I could tell a 3 hour special was coming on.
Having made this defeatist decision, I treated the rest of the 1st half of the course as a training exercise. I didn't want to be out for longer than 90 minutes and, given how long I'd spent on control 1 this effectively mean doing one side of the map before heading for home. Generally my orienteering here was relatively slow and more precise, although I did pick up my pace when some overly flash looking person got a bit too close behind (I led them for two controls, then dropped back to follow them for another two before loosing them).
Overall I saw this as a start of season lesson that I seriously need more forest orienteering practice.