orienteering long (Kangaroo Crossing) 1:37:22 [3] 7.0 km (13:55 / km)
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
This was meant to be the WOC long trial but the organisers hadn't realised that initially and then when they did lengthen the courses a little this was offset by the fact that they mainly traversed the kinder side of the map and that the undergrowth wasn't quite so green at the end of summer - and therefore the top women's times were still well under an hour. It did mean however that even by walking all the uphills and only jogging the downhills I wasn't out for too long.
First leg was a classic, probably the best on the course, and caught out A LOT of people. Net ascent/descent was only a couple of contours but the straight line looked fairly green & junky so I climbed, expecting to contour on a clearer line and then drop in to the gully above the control (which looked to me like a perfect attack point although I heard more than one person say they hadn't done that because they were uncertain of finding the right gully). The only problem was that I missed identifying the clearer strip and so went all the way to the top of the hill - oops. It took a little while to drop 100m in climb from there!
The next few controls were all fine, and fairly direct routes - Bridget passed me as I was hesitant in the green on the way to 4 so that was reassuring (good run by her today and you can see from the splits that she did best on the shorter middle-distance style legs) and Lizzie & Jasmine went past on the climb out of 8, then Anna on the way in to 11 where we both hesitated in the circle. I stuffed up 13 on the downhill run though, by dropping too low and having to climb up through some vicious green, but it's not orienteering if you don't get scratches. And it was even fun going back out there, control collecting afterwards with Duncan the Scottish guy. He was a bit disappointed when I told him we'd only seen wallabies not kangaroos.