rogaining race 3:56:00 [3] 33.0 km (7:09 / km)
shoes: Asics GT-2000
Twilight 4hr rogaine around Goolwa with Meredith, starting from the aquatic club. We began with the dunes/beach section to the south (beach running wasn't too bad apart from the 4WDs who thought we were on their road; apparently this section is a 40kph designated roadway so it would have been good for the organisers to tell us that) and then looped north through the suburbs before heading south to 91 which was right at the edge of bushland and described as on "a tree" and which we proceeded to run straight past, not seeing it at knee height on a bush, and which we eventually came back to about 5 min later (there were a few other teams, like us, searching too far into the scrub).
About 90 min gone by this point and the next section was through the northern backblocks of Goolwa and we could have continued to the 4 controls in the northeast but then would have run out of things to do so I suggested that we find water in the town (the school was good for that) and then commit to the 10km loop on Hindmarsh Island because it wasn't really possible to do only part of that (another thing I think the organisers should have done was to mark the private land out of bounds). So we did it all, seeing lots of teams coming off the island as we were crossing the bridge on to it, and seeing very few teams out there because most people had done the island first. The road was starting to get a bit hard underfoot for my bad foot and for all of Meredith's legs (I think they found the last 90 min a struggle) but after taking a photo of team 81 (us) at control 81 (the monument; probably the highest point on the course unless you count the peak of the bridge) we had about 55 min left and so decided to pick up a couple of extra 30s in the south part of the island - Meredith did us a good save when I was getting confused about the configuration of the marina lakes (George hates delivering to Hindmarsh Island) and though we thought it prudent to skip a 50 there, did pick up 54 under the bridge :)
Only 2 more controls along the foreshore and we were back with 3 1/2 minutes to spare. A good thing too because when the results were read out there were 3 teams on our score but we had got in just ahead of Troy/Slats and also the Murphys! And managed to get a few more points than Zara/Fern (impressive of Fern to run over 30km) so we were 1st women's and 5th overall. I'm quite pleased by this result and by Meredith's persistence and by the thought that possibly if we hadn't lost time on 91 we could have got 53 on the island, and possibly if we hadn't gone via the dunes first we could instead have gone to the NE controls for an extra 30 points and quicker going, and potentially even have beaten 2nd-4th who weren't very far ahead of us. So it's kind of cool to have had that potential. Never going to beat 1st though - Dion Byas and his friend who is training for Comrades cleaned up the entire 40km course with 25 min to spare!