Teering race (WOC Trials) 1:01:58 [5] **** 4.9 km (12:39 / km) +200m 10:30 / km
spiked:14/19c shoes: Innov8 Mudclaw 270
Littlechild Creek, NOL 11. A depressing nightmare; I certainly thought so for a couple of days. My rough technique which is based on run fast in the right direction and relocate near the circle didn't cope with this event, but post-race analysis has thrown up a couple of extenuating circumstances which is what we all need to be able to say "Not my fault".
Ran OK to 1, but 2 was a boulder in "walk" green which I dropped about a minute on. As I went into the green I saw a control in open terrain to the north, so I decided to head back that way and pick up the adjacent taped river crossing from there, which I did. Research now shows that this taped and well used crossing was actually from the 2005 Nationals, and wasn't the taped crossing shown on the map, which was 100m further south. Needless to say I got onto the wrong spur and looked at the wrong boulder. Only lost 2 minutes but I lost confidence.
My remaining confidence was shattered on the long leg to 6. I drifted wide out to the track and ran up to a track bend 100m off the control and ran in. I had gone in a bit early and got on the wrong group of boulders - the problem was I couldn't identify them on the map. I wandered around a bit and got out into an open marsh stretching for many 100s of metres. At one end there was a massive boulder the size of a castle. No, I couldn't find it on the map. Turns out it was partly obscured under the control circle, being only 50m from my control, but I couldn't identify it as such. I think I'm used to massive boulders being marked with a bigger size dot. Anyway it took me a further 5 minutes of a 7 minute time loss to get back out to the track and make 100% certain.
The rest of the course was painful as now the 200m of climb (advertised as 135m) kicked in and I made a couple more small errors. Tried for the finish split but only got 2nd on it to Reuben Smith.
1 R Walter 35.18, 42 (46) ER 61.59. 292 IOF points, 0 Aus points.