Run race ((orienteering)) 34:30 [3] *** 2.3 km (15:00 / km) +135m 11:36 / km
spiked:4/7c
If this morning was decent then this afternoon was ugly. It was quickly apparent that coming back for a second time in a day was more than I could handle at this point - I might have got away with it on a physically easier area but this one was tough even by Mount Alexander standards. After five controls, at which point I'd run maybe 20% of the course, lost a bit of time on 1 and 4, and the back was giving me trouble even walking up hills, I decided that slogging around for perhaps 90 minutes wasn't going to do me any favours and that tomorrow was another day, but still managed to make a bit of a mess of the descent to 17 cutting there from 5. (It probably didn't help that I'd taken my northern hemisphere compass).
With rain developing a bit earlier than I expected, I suspect going out on "dry tyres" would have been a bad call had I lasted longer.
Times were pretty slow on the NOL courses (especially for the juniors), and more so on the others - only 20 of the 45 course 3 runners finished. This was definitely a shock to the system for a lot of people who've done little or no forest orienteering in the last year.
First time for a few years I've ventured into Harcourt, which has definitely changed since the mountain bikers hit town (the general store is definitely considerably more upmarket than it was the last time I was here). Heading back to Ballarat, where I'm staying tonight - partly because there was nothing in Castlemaine, and only the Lake House at $1500 a night in Daylesford - was also a first for a while, in which I noticed a couple of new housing estates popping up of a very outer suburban style, one in Harcourt and one in Campbells Creek. Tells us a bit about the changed dynamics with people leaving town. (Another local change, so Neil tells me, is that a lot of the apple orchards around Harcourt are going, which is a pity).