Orienteering race (relay) 51:24 [5] **** 6.6 km (7:47 / km)
shoes: Integrators
BOC Relays Culbin West first leg with FVO Flyers.
Was looking forward to this with a wee bit of trepidation as it was certainly the best team I've run for with Roger on second and Ewan as anchor.
Although I think of myself as a bit of a speed merchant that seems to be nonsense as loads of guys hared off in front of me and I was struggling to plough through the heather. Tired from yesterday: nothing to do with the shampoo consumption.
Bit of a pause before 1 to work out where I was, which I did successfully and then was going well and by 4/5 was running with David Sprot. By 7 we caught Ralph Street. I wasn't certain they were on the same gaffle as me as I hadn't seen them early on but was confident I could keep up and felt I was orienteering well - running my own race, as I had been telt. 8 was a tricky control, far into the green, with no clear safe route, so I decided to take a careful bearing through the open depressions from the ride end/veg corner. I had lost contact a wee bit racing through the white so stopped and confirmed my location, then set off carefully ticking off the bracken filled depressions. The bracken was thick on the last one and I got pushed round to the left but instead of going back round to the right got in a little panic, went further left, got in a real panic as I knew I was near then a bit of headlesschickenfollowothersfindwrongcontrolswearalot. Ended up back at the white section. Confirmed where I was (bit harder this time) ran a bit harder straight through, back to the same place, kept going this time and relocated on the obvious relocation feature (big open reentrant) and up into the control swearing. Need to have more faith in my own ability and execute the chosen plan. Was fine after this (apart from looping route on the long leg) but had lost 6 or 7 minutes and was a long way back.
Very annoyed and swore some more. Apologies for the terrible language. Would have been 43mins if it wasn't for 8. Then Roger went out and made an even bigger mess of things than me. Would have been 6th if either of us hadn't messed up or 5th if neither of us were so silly and that would have been pretty pleasing. Roger probably wouldn't have messed up if he hadn't been so far down thanks to me though.
Ewan stormed round and I think he will be looking for some new team mates.