orienteering race (Tothill Range) 1:19:00 [2] 5.3 km (14:54 / km) +200m 12:32 / km
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
Tothill is a Wallaringa map, owned by a sanctuary consortium of which one of our members is a member, and which is always used in the depths of winter when the access road is guaranteed to be at its muddiest. Although there are excellent views from the top of the range, even climbing the hill to the start caused my knee & hip to threaten to give way, and so I took it very easy, walking all the hills - of which there are many - and with frequent stretching stops. Peter K had recycled his courses from 5 years ago, some of the controls from which had subsequently been recycled for the 2011 event, but familiarity didn't breed too much contempt because it was very nice to be out there all by myself (have had students on placement with me at work since the beginning of April...) trying not to tread on the greenhood orchids and admiring the first golden wattle blooms of the season. I found the contentious control 7 ok and then, when control collecting later on (it was bloody freezing by then) had to have 3 goes at re-locating it!
Excellent group dinner at the Black Sheep was followed by a far too late evening of WOC-Relay watching online with Zara by the fire in our cottage while George slumbered peacefully to the sound of the commentary. I was really frustrated though by the fact that, having paid for the live centre, I then had to enter my 19-digit code every time I wanted to watch the GPS tracking for each new relay leg (so that was 6 times at a minimum) and missed the beginning of the new leg's tracking each time, also that the live video feed didn't begin until an hour after the women's mass start, plus each time I shut down a relay leg's tracking which we had no further use for, I lost the video feed which had been open in a parallel window linked to that login, and had to open it up again through the new leg's login. Next year I think I'll watch the relay in person!