http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/77840134/?open...
The closer this event got, the more I was looking forward to it. Starting from the school in Colonel Light Gardens, it had to include much of the area I know and love. And certainly it was useful in the planning stage to be able to say to Zara "a run to there and back again takes me x amount of time". We ruled out the Brownhill/Waite section because we wanted to be able to do all of Shepherds Hill/Blackwood/Belair, allowing us to do however much of the flat suburbs we had time for at the end. Then the question was how best to do Sleeps Hill quarries efficiently with the limitation being train line crossings.
Headed out almost past my house (shortcut through the hospital) on the way to the first control, got the suburban ones through St Marys/Panorama, past Clapham primary, up the Lynton bike path and in-and-out of a couple of side gullies. From 93 on the quarry kept climbing straight up to Mead St, decided to get 55 over the other side of Gloucester, got 74 & 82 off the end of Gloucester then down a steep gully (73) into Shepherds Hill. Passed a lot of people staggering up this gully and Randell Taylor said to me "shouldn't you have a blindfold?"
Went briefly left instead of right when we hit the creek at the bottom of the park by the horse arena, so maybe 3 min lost on 65, then rather more than that on 81 where we were following up the creek on the southern boundary and I foolishly read 82's description (watercourse) instead of 81's (the gully) and completely forgot to look for a side gully so overran it by about 5 min - oops.
Up past Eden Hills Primary, down into an unnamed gully, up to Main Rd, down to the train line, down to Hawthowndene oval, up Minno Creek heading north. Definitely dark by here and I accidentally punched 43 in 63's box 'cos I couldn't see the control card properly. Re-punched in the right box then when we got to the next control which was 63, it turned out to have the same punch pattern anyway! Sheoak Rd, St John's Grammar, then down Randell's reserve very glad of 2 head torches.
Had about half an hour left at the bottom - north to 60 on the Brownhill Ck bridge then west to 34 at the park on Wattlebury, west to 22 by the bowls club (shortcut down an unmapped laneway, with which Colonel Light Gardens is absolutely riddled) and we had 9 min left so went SE to 22. Hmm, isn't that the street where the course setters live? The description: Number 13. Okay, so I know which is their house, put the map away and run. 4 minutes left, 3 blocks to go. I said to Zara "this is part of my fartlek loop, each block takes a minute".
And so we got back with over a minute to spare. I was pretty happy with the race though figured that if we'd made no mistakes we could have had time for an extra 30 points. Very happy with the running intensity which never felt too hard although I did lag behind Zara going up hills. As it turned out, we were over 100 points clear of second place, which was a nice surprise!