orienteering race (Sydney Summer Series) 44:49 [4]
shoes: Asics Trabuco
At Freshwater, north of Manly. The coastline is spectacular there (as it is anywhere in Sydney) with steep headlands interspersed by beaches, so I didn't exactly expect the course to be flat. Summer series has gone upmarket now and uses SI so you don't have to carry a pencil, although the controls are still flowerpots. And the weird thing is that you get the map when you register, so for a 45-minute score, there are people who spend nearly as long as this studying the map and planning their route in advance.
Not sure that pre-planning would have helped me as I didn't know my expected pace. Turned out I actually felt a lot better running than I'd anticipated, and was able to go sort of faster than I've done lately, which was nice. Although when it came to soft sand on the beaches I was almost running on the spot! Anyway, headed south up and over a hill, down past a lagoon to the north end of Manly Beach, north past some ocean baths, up and over a headland, down to the next beach, past some ocean baths, up and over a headland, by which time I was about level with the start and had about 15 min left but not having checked how far I got in the first 15 min couldn't really anticipate my remaining potential distance. So at about this time I actually started looking at what points the controls were worth. Foolishly got an extra 10 points on the beach when I should have turned inland, as I then didn't have time for 30 points in a school which I had to run straight past anyway (access was a bit complicated with gates locked for the holidays, and I never even thought about how if I had got that control I would still have been much less than 3 min late) and sprinted home with 11 seconds to spare.
410 points is pretty average, would have been happier with 430, could possibly have got around the northern controls quicker as that end of the map was less steep - but also less scenic. Was interested to hear people saying that running north up the beach was much more efficient than running south into the southerly!