Orienteering race 17:53 [5] 3.68 km (4:52 / km) +45m 4:35 / km
shoes: Puma Faas 300 Black
State sprint champs at John XXIII.
Went into this thinking that 7th of the 13 starters was about the best I could hope for. Then Sten got sick so top 6 was the revised target and the legs felt pretty good warming up so I was feeling quite positive.
Two kids starting one minute before me hadn't cleared and checked and spent the whole minute trying to sort that out so I was a little distracted and late starting myself.
Not fast out of the start but happy with map contact and got 1 feeling good. 2 looked simple but when I came around the corner it all looked wrong. Worked out I had to go up a level pretty quickly but it put me a bit behind and I was slow and indecisive going to 3. A bit of open running to 4 allowed me to get back in control. Saw Adrian leaving 4 as I came in and had nearly caught him by 7 where I did my usual thing of deciding to go right to 8 just because Adrian went left. Adrian was coming into 8 as I left but I think he made a mistake so not sure how the route compared.
Went right around the road from 9 to 10 because it seemed safer and allowed me to read ahead a bit although that didn't really help much with only a couple more controls before the map change. Starting to feel pretty tired running to 11 and king of hoping the second map would be short and technical. Left of the building to 12 and didn't see it straight away behind the pillar. Did the alternate route thing again on 13 going left out near the carpark just because I had seen Ivan coming into the map change from the other side earlier, really need to try to break that habit.
Second loop was surprisingly simple and physical. Having seen Ivan run through to 14 earlier made it easier to get map contact quickly but I did take a slightly different route. Been to 15 before so I went in the same way I did to 8. At first I thought 16 might be tricky but actually you could just run pretty straight so it was a long hard run for home from 15. Largely downhill to 16 so didn't feel too bad here but really starting to suffer going back up to 17 and 18.
So no real mistakes, just a couple of places where I made route choices for poor reasons, a bit of hesitation from the level change at 2 and a major lack of fitness. Ended up 5th, only about 20 seconds down on 3rd but another minute to Steve and Henry. Almost makes me want to start training a bit harder.