orienteering race (Burngoogee) 54:16 [4] 6.1 km (8:54 / km)
shoes: new Olways
A very fun morning watching the schools' team kids in the relay, even if the fumes from red/yellow/blue hairspray were a bit overwhelming. Particularly impressed by the fact that the South Aussie girls were wearing Superman undies over their tights. No other state has the opportunity to do that!
Yeah, so the Aust relays were held later on the same map. I won't go into how this came to be midweek-and-poorly-attended, while the Oceania relays were a NOL race where states couldn't easily make full elite teams, but anyway, I didn't have a team. Until Anna pointed out that Mat McGuire and Emily Cantwell were also orphans, so we made a team which was unofficial on about 3 levels, and unless I'm mistaken, all enjoyed ourselves. I felt better running than I had on any other day so far this week, and was clean on all but one of the controls - the exception being 4, a downhill leg where I left the track as it bent around the spur. Passed a boulder, rounded a clump of rocks, dropped into the gully on the right along with Kate Morrison: no control. Found this hard to believe, as did she, I went a fair way down into the green making absolutely certain that there was no control, and just as I had the "oh crap" moment of realisation that we were one gully too far east, Anna appeared over the spur from the correct gully (although, to quote herself, she hadn't always been in it). So I'd guess I lost about 3 min there. Kate went on to do strange things on the next control and didn't catch up to me again until the top of the uphill slog after the spectator control.