orienteering race (NOL sprint relay) 38:40 [4] 4.2 km (9:12 / km) +95m 8:16 / km
shoes: Asics GT-2000
Roma Street Parklands. I kind of knew this was a bowl of greenery above the train station but not how many winding paths, elevated walkways, water features and water dragons there would be. I also kind of knew that my unofficial relay team wasn't going to achieve anything special so when Mary (Vic girl - who'd turned up 10 min before the mass start) came walking back halfway through her first leg saying she'd accidentally gone in to the out of bounds, and pulled the plug because she thought she'd be disqualified anyway, I wasn't too fussed.
Waited for the frontrunners to come through (and a few more) then picked up my map and proceeded to enjoy myself. It's a great little area, expertly mapped by Wendy, who had then set 4 separate courses for each team so that each course was run by one or other of the team members but very few people actually ran the same pair of courses as each other (I had C then B). Was running pretty cautiously, but this didn't stop me from running on to a walkway thinking I could get down it at the point I needed to, then having to backtrack. Only did this once though, but at another point was daft enough to read a control description 'open area' as being on a paved area and so looked on the wrong side of the hedge. Also not sure that I took the best route around the lake.
Guessing that I lost about 90-120 sec on the first loop; it took me 19:07 whereas after a break and some spectating, I headed out on the second loop, which was nominally 100m longer but didn't seem quite so complicated (or maybe I knew the traps now) and took me 17:32.