orienteering race (NOL sprint final) 30:14 [3] 2.5 km (12:06 / km) +116m 9:49 / km
shoes: Asics GT-2000
I'll be up front and say it: this course was too long, with a winning time of 20 min rather than 15 - and that's at Hanny pace! Also it was rather poorly set; although I do realise that some last minute changes were necessary due to the building works, there was absolutely no need to make the women come all the way down the scaffolding stairs just to make them punch one control (the men's no.1) and then go straight back up the stairs to the next control. And there was also no need to hide controls in the cupboard under the stairs, I mean the crawl space under the buildings where it was too dark even to see the control numbers.
It wasn't a good sleeping night as my stiff back woke me up with discomfort and even Panadol before warming up didn't help much with mobility. It wasn't a good start to the race as I got attacked by a puddle on the way to the first control. Slid out on a patch of mud when cornering and went down, bashing my thigh painfully on the kerb. Sat there and sooked for a few seconds then punched the first control and hobbled up the scary scaffolding staircase. Plodded through the controls in the school ok, didn't worry too much about the one which was in the wrong place (wrong side of a wall, effectively; I will comment that these courses were printed with Corpse and the controls didn't always seem to be centred as exactly as they could have been!).
Ran slap bang into Mace as we rounded a corner from opposite directions (this seemed to happen a lot to people throughout the course), hastily apologised and then I took a closer look at where control 6 was - at the bottom of those bloody stairs. Now I hate heights, but I couldn't very well go down them with my eyes closed, so I walked down. I could, however, find an alternate way up to avoid having to take the stairs a 3rd time, and as it turned out this route was marginally more efficient - Clare Baker had caught me at 6 but I beat her into 7, and then for the next few controls she was leaving as I arrived so my routes mustn't have been too bad.
I wasn't very impressed with control 10 though - another "cupboard under the stairs" scenario, described as being at the end of an undercover area. Fair enough, but we'd come at it by a corridor through the middle of a building and the map showed a small dead end next to the main corridor. It didn't, however, make it clear that this cul-de-sac was a flight of stairs below the main corridor, and so I looked in the identical cul-de-sac a flight of stairs above. Little things like this took the gloss off the course, I will say. I understand that it's almost impossible to map a campus on a hillside when walkways start off at one level and finish at another, but some control sites are just better off not being used.
Which is not to say that I didn't still enjoy the course, as I really do like orienteering for the navigational challenge of it and this was suitably challenging. I don't think I lost much time navigationally, although a couple of my route choices could have been more efficient. Sadly, it's just that I am so very slow these days that I probably shouldn't be running elites (roll on W40?) but then again, maybe I can offer to come last each time as a community service :)