orienteering race 37:50 [4]
shoes: Asics Trabuco
OA conference event around the AIS and the suburb of Bruce. Scatter O, 18 controls meant leaving out 2. Headed south through CIT first, acquiring needle-grass-socks within the first minute, wasting about a minute on 16 because I'm not used to controls being centred on unmapped features and so did laps of the termite mound nearest to the centre of the circle before reading the description (would be better if they're actually printed on the control card, like at our Summer Series) and then searching on a number of light poles before finding the one with a control attached.
Left out 3, enjoyed the section running north through the new housing in Bruce, including Ben & Mace's apartment from the balcony of which he & Robbie, beers in hand, were cheerfully heckling orienteers going to control 6 on the pond nearby. Left out 4 up the hill and headed east into AIS-land; clockwise turned out to be the right direction to avoid most of the fence entanglements, although, heading back to the finish after 10 - and I had already put my map away and was just running on memory - I was blocked by a large gate, apparently locked, which meant I couldn't get through to the visitors' centre and had to go around the stadium, as did plenty of other people.
Probably this was harder than I've run for a while, but also running harder than I've been able to do for a while, so I was fairly pleased. Also glad to utilise newly-acquired map knowledge when walking myself back to Ben's much later in the dark, as I'd become completely and utterly disoriented walking there from the AIS the night before, despite being escorted by a nice boy on a bicycle :)