orienteering race (Chalks/Blood & Thunder) 1:25:51 [3] 9.4 km (9:08 / km)
shoes: Inov8 X-Talon
Managed to get to the event too late to help WA set up, so went for a run comparatively early before it started raining. Legs had almost complete inability to move up hills, especially at the beginning - it's all coming from my back, but hip/knee/ITB was a lot better today. Anyway, the pine forest was nice & soft underfoot, apart from lots of brashings which necessitated clambering over them because they couldn't really be jumped. Had trouble with no. 4 in an area of young pines with rows of old logs, one of which I suspect may have been obscuring the boulder that the control should have been on. Caught a glimpse of AK here who had started about 3 min before me, but had probably lost 3 min on this control; then I proceeded to lose 3 min on it myself. Took the track option to 5 and caught a glimpse of AK again, who'd foolishly gone cross country, which suboptimal option I then proceeded to take to 6, while he caught me there by going around the road.
6-7 was a 1.7km leg where I went comparatively low to the right and Andrew took a more direct track higher up, I think. Anyway, I could see him about 200m ahead of me going into each of the next three controls but I was well behind by the time it came to the steep climb out of 9, although as I caught my breath at the top I did spot a flash of blue along the ridge track, nearly to 10 already. Hope that he wouldn't beat me by *too* much kept me from being wussy through the next few controls including a horrible leg through brashings, then as I headed up the track towards the second-last control I saw the blue streak pop out of the forest from an unexpected direction (I think we were both slow learners when it came to realising that cross-country was not the best route choice) so I got a bit excited and promptly punched the kiddies' control instead of my own (also my own) and we belted down the hill together, nearly taking out Robin in my beeline to the finish.
Yeah, so still reeeally slow but running a lot better than I have at any time in the last month. Warmdown was control collecting, which got a bit awkward when it turned out that the course planner (who's a local) had never obtained a key to any of the forestry gates during the planning and permissions process - and just told us "oh, you can drive around this one". Which George & I duly did, a little uneasily, and subsequently we endountered the forest ranger, presumably out looking for people who had just done what we'd done. I explained that we were control collecting and he asked which gate we'd come through. I told him, and he seemed satisfied, and thankfully he didn't ask whether we actually had a key to it...