Orienteering race 59:49 [5] 5.2 km (11:30 / km)
Shocking start to the race! Totally underestimated the time needed to get to the start!!! Was 1.7 km but took over 20 minutes to get there.. It was horrible, I started off at a slow jog then realised I might be leaving it a little tight until I was running at race pace for the last 900m to get there! My start time was at the maps already to start so I didn't have time to get my chest number, stretch, had stupidly just taken a thick sports gel without any water and couldn't even pick up my map because I had my gloves on the wrong hand!! Was surprised to hear that Jess and Heather were both late to the start too.. Heather even started almost 2 minutes after her actual start time!
Tried to put it behind me and took the first two controls really carefully. I was still in a bit of a fluster from the start and made a big mistake on number 3 - It had just started hailing and I was stuck in a big green patch of rododhendron and ran out onto the nearest track but mistook it for a parallel track just a little further south of there. I ran on in the direction I thought the control was but things started looking suspiciously wrong.. Tried to relocate off the contours but they were too vague in the open gullies and the most of the technical gold mining near by was mapped as 'broken ground' which didn't really help. The tracks were useless also since this area is used for mountain biking and they criss cross everywhere. Ran south to relocate off a major track and was pretty annoyed to see that the control feature was quite obvious.
This was my major downfall today- lost 11 minutes and I was really disspointed about it but I have no doubt that If I had have had a clean start and been in a calmer state I wouldn't have made such a simple misjudgement. I was overly hesitant for the rest of the race.. number 4 and number 8 I lost alot of time just because I was double checking eveything. Number 11 I had difficulty with also, but I was looking in a depression a little North of the control site, once again frustrated with the 'broken ground' (which wasn't much different to the surrounding terrain).
Felt physically pretty fit today once I had recovered from my 2 km race pace warm up!!