orienteering race (Mulga Valley) 59:32 [4] 7.1 km (8:23 / km) +205m 7:20 / km
shoes: Inov8 X-Talon
Yeah, so it was a bit breezy this morning, and not-exactly warm. Because I didn't race on Sat, I had one of the earlier W21E starts, 2 min after Lauren, who I started catching glimpses of on the way to the second control (she must have lost time on the first), but she was quicker through the ins and outs of the big erosions than me (very glad I was wearing spikes though) and when I was stopped on the way to 5 by an M14 asking me where he was, I lost sight of her, but then she overshot 5 and I snuck past. I'd hoped not to see her again, but I veered too far right on my bearing on the long leg to 7 (went up the wrong creek branch off the main creek but corrected with some hesitation although not too much damage) and as I punched 9 she came down behind me, much to my surprise, and so I didn't pay quite enough attention to where we crossed the next big creek.
Heading south up the hill I figured we were on one of two creeks, and more likely the western one when really we wanted the eastern one. Once I was certain of this, I veered further east, which meant crossing a couple of otherwise-unnecessary spurs and also I overshot the control slightly at the end, but it could have been a lot worse - I suspect Lauren may have bounced off the start! The rest was pretty straightforward and when Simon went past me at the radio control he conveniently led me to the gap under the fence but there was no way I could even keep him in sight on the spectator leg into the headwind across to the quarry. Finished off ok although feel as though I lost the best part of 4 min due to the bad bearings on the 2 long legs. Am surprised that these don't show up as errors on Winsplits but then not even the 2 short legs where I was 23rd because I struggled in and out of erosion gullies count as errors, apparently.
Warmdown was grabbing a baby and using her as a hot-water-bottle (she went to sleep on my chest, which made me feel rather smug, but I didn't dare put her down in case she squawked) and later on collecting controls with Amy. From my perspective, it was a great carnival and went really well, although when I passed the accident site at the southern end of the Burra bypass I hoped against hope that it hadn't involved orienteers - which unfortunately it had, but sounds as though while fairly nasty, it could potentially have been a lot worse in terms of injury.
Got home and George had done an amazing job of moving nearly everything which still remained at Perry Ave to Avenue Rd, including the dog. So now we live on a tautology :)