orienteering race (The Waterholes) 1:09:39 [4] 8.3 km (8:23 / km)
shoes: new Olways
To be read in conjunction with John's (Nieuwy's) log!
Did the long course, tried to run as hard as I could through the soft squelchy pine forest and the thicker native scrub in practice for Vic. I know the Warbys will have a lot of junk on the ground and when we ran the Aust schools champs there in 1992 some parts were ankle deep in water.
Anyway, no 2 was too low down the gully, which I hit spot on but then ran too far up because I saw the control on the upper waterhole. Then I had to run down again. Riordan ran past me on 5 but he may have wombled a bit on 6, I was lucky in the young pines there because I saw him punch it.
11 and 7 were very close to each other, I saw the flag for 11 and used it as an attack point for 7 but 11 was in the wrong place so I (and Riordan) ended up 100m too far downhill. I should have realised that John, who was thundering down the hill behind us, had stopped to punch 7 - when I could no longer hear his squelchsteps! Coming to 11 later on, it was clearly on a log not the dead tree it was supposed to be on, which was admittedly hidden in a thicket.
I had the correct line of pines east from 18, popped out on to the track at the correct earthmound, but no control. Ran north on the track first, then south to the unmapped mound which did have a flag on it. Jim, the course planner, can be forgiven for this one, because that was the spot where he had bogged his ute while putting the controls out the day before, and had to go home to get his tractor and tow himself out! The wheelmarks were impressive.
I was tiring a bit by the end but enjoyed splashing through the string of waterholes which the map is named after. John 53, Riordan 55, Tom 68, me 69. Probably lost at most 5 min on all the map/control dodginess.
Got back and downloaded just before Wallaringa's computer displayed the Blue Screen of Death (to quote Andrew) and died with its legs in the air, taking all the event data with it. Thereafter we got everyone to download their splits twice and kept a copy so that the results could be compiled manually. Pity about all the effort Jim, Andrew, Regina & I went to, to make the event full SI....