orienteering race (Vic long champs) 1:56:23 [3] 7.6 km (15:19 / km)
(injured) shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
People kept asking me this week if I had run on Kangaroo Crossing before and what it's like! The answers were: Camp champs on the national junior camp Jan 1993 - and it's a cross between Barambogie and the Warbys. I hadn't been certain yesterday of starting the course, but woke to ok knees (after drugs) and decided that the 1km uphill warmup to the start would be a good indicator, and I could always cut the course short if I didn't want to finish. Except that there was a whacking great leg to the second control with no way of going except up/down/over the hills, and once I'd done that, I might as well get the rewards of the interesting stuff!
Actually, it was all interesting. And I say this, who doesn't like Alex's mapping because I can't distinguish between the rocks he's mapped and the rocks he hasn't. But I do like native pines (maybe not so much when I am thrashing through the fallen tangled ones) although I don't know that the mapping of light vs dark green, or for that matter white vs yellow, was entirely dependable. And I will admit to being grateful when first Aislinn and then Lizzie came through me on that leg as there were moments when I had no clue where I was. Spiked the control okay though and clambered up another hill, down the other side and up to the track for a sweet run down to 3 although I wondered what it would do to my knees.
Clean but slow through the next couple and then on 6, a 750m diagonal across a junky hillside where net descent was actually only 5 contours, thought about going up to where it was clearer, started upwards, changed my mind because others seemed to be choosing the downward option, got halfway along there before deciding that up would have been better, so clambered, scrambled, boulder-hopped and at one point chimneyed, up through the thickest scrappiest slope on the whole map and then didn't exactly know where I was when I hit the top - whoops! So that leg was only about 10 min slower than Lizzie's split...saw Kathryn at 6 and 7 (had actually seen her passing above me on my way to 6), and something must have happened to her on the next couple of controls because she finished after me. Got lucky on 12 because I couldn't read the yellow vs white and was really just going on bearing/distance. Overshot 15 being out of the green when I should have been in it, but that was the only control circle I stuffed up.
Really good course, tough but fair, and I enjoyed it even though I couldn't run much. So, that's my long run training for Aust Champs done, then.