orienteering race (ACT NOL long) 2:07:02 [3] 11.2 km (11:21 / km) +310m 9:58 / km
The Sandhills, AKA Birkenburn, where I had last run on a National Junior Camp in 1993. I was looking forward to this but unfortunately not really feeling up to a long race, even if the morning had started to warm up from the -6 which had left frost in some valleys. Excellent first leg 2.5km across the map; I couldn't see that I'd gain anything by going left (which held a risk of loss of map contact) so I went fairly straight up & over - was excited to see that the tower marked on the hilltop had a ladder up to a trig point, but I resisted climbing it - and in hindsight I should have followed the ridgeline for longer instead of crossing quite so many side gullies, because I added a bit of extra climb and took 29 min for that leg. Also it meant I took basically the same route that I then did 2-3 and on leaving 6 as well. I enjoyed the challenge of reading the contours, although I couldn't always be certain how the rock had been mapped, which is why I veered on my way in to 6 because I couldn't see any boulders on the spur to my left even though half a dozen were mapped. Also veered a bit on the way to 5 because I initially didn't read that I needed to go through 2 saddles.
To 7 I was very careful with my line (again, probably too direct and climbed down & up more than necessary) but was rewarded by the sight of a massive termite mound. Didn't realise that I had already been out for 90 minutes by this point...to 8 I was a bit high and had to force myself to go low, then when I came to an unmapped channel/erosion in the bracken thought I must have overshot it but in fact that was a wombat digging, about 20m from the control!
Foolishly I had thought that the last bit through the flat stuff wouldn't be too bad but in fact the 2 loops added up to over 3km and I hit the wall here, so a lot of people went through me at the end. Would really have preferred to take under 2 hours, and was originally hoping for 10-minute km (but that's what Tash did, so maybe it's a bit unrealistic for me) but it was definitely a good course in lovely terrain, and as I said, it's all rogaine training.
Had time afterwards to visit some galleries and markets with G before hopping on the big kangaroo to fly home. And if I'd had any doubts about being properly coldy, the pain in my ears on the descent into Adelaide (reminiscent of WOC trials 2011; why, when I almost never get sick, does it seem to happen around the long races?) made it emphatically obvious. But all the same I had a great birthday weekend :)