Orienteering race 1:56:47 [4] 19.5 km (5:59 / km) +250m 5:38 / km
ahr:163 max:178 shoes: Inov8 X-Claw 275
NOL Long at Hill End. 11th and 24.18 down on Matt Doyle. This was a race with some ups and downs for me! Paced myself pretty conservatively and was able to finish quite strongly but at the same time I rarely felt like I was actually racing. Had a few physical issues. On the way out of #7 I literally ran into the corner of the broken down fence on the edge of the OOB. I managed to hit the end of a rusty old star picket end-on with my shin, slicing it up pretty well. One cut looked sort of bad but not that deep so I decided to keep going, see how it was going when I was closer to the assembly area. It hurt pretty bad for a while but eventually settled and when I checked it later it wasn't bleeding so I just kept on trucking. The other physical problem was I got a plantarfasciitis thing in my left foot around #16. Stretching the foot and calf didn't help so on the way to #17 I had to stop and massage the sole of my foot and thankfully that resolved it. Pushed a bit harder from #17 onwards and was hitting things fairly well but slowed a fair bit in the tricky last section in the mining. Still lost a bit of time on #25 but did better than some people here. Enjoyable race apart from the fence incident, particularly the mixture of terrains, not something I've encountered much in races. I would like to be fit and strong enough to actually race a long distance though. Pretty happy with my nav, although I need more practice in mining to be more aggressive and confident.