Orienteering race 1:55:25 [5] *** 17.9 km (6:27 / km) +485m 5:41 / km
ahr:174 max:184 spiked:20/28c shoes: Inov8 X-Claw 275
Aus Long Champs at Hill End, 16th and perhaps 10th Aussie (not sure who's a resident and who's just visiting). A reasonable run which I think reflects my fitness and the volume of technical orienteering I've done this year. I was quite rusty in the really detailed stuff (first gold mining in 2 years?). I made a bunch of 20-30s hesitations/errors and topped it off with about 2min on #15. So I dropped about 5min overall in the nav.
Physically it was about as expected: I wasn't fast or strong up the hills but I was untroubled by the distance. This is a surprising new pattern for me but I guess number of 2h+ runs I've done lately exceeds previous training periods. Also I was disturbed to find that even when everyone is reduced to walking uphill I'm still slower! My achilles started hurting at about 2/3 distance which made me tentative through the rougher terrain but not sure that it really slowed me down much. The big screw up was falling leaving #20 and cutting my knee open. It required 6 stitches that evening in Bathurst which ruled me out of the relay on Sunday. 4 races in the carnival entered but only 1 started - how frustrating!
Enjoyable and challenging terrain and overall I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the run through the 2nd half with Peter Hobbs. I was however a little disappointed with the lack of route choices in the longer legs. Out of the 6 longest legs only 2 had more than one route choice.