orienteering race (The Sandmine mid distance) 56:31 [4] 5.4 km (10:28 / km)
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
I love this map - classic Pt Lincoln limestone country with low ridges and basins and the occasional sinkhole (and impenetrable patches of mallee with bridal wreath creeper) and really enjoyed controlling the SA champs here in 2005. So I was really excited about running here, and started out nice & early, and was having great fun running along all by myself confidently interpreting the contours and ticking off the patches of vegetation - although in hindsight I was a bit gung-ho about approaching 2 on a bland slope, and lucky to find it after slight hesitation. Pride goes before a fall though, and perhaps I shouldn't have chosen to come back across that slope on the way to 5, but taken a safe route around the front of the knolls to the south.
All I needed to do was go through the correct saddle at the top of the ridge, then west into the next basin, but I was anxious about not going too far left into the basin which ran SW, and so veered a bit too far right, and crossed a saddle 100m too far north which led into a NW-running basin. Would have been easily corrected if I'd only looked at my compass for a second, but I didn't even think of doing so and consequently made the biggest parallel error I can recall doing in a very long time, and then compounded it by, when I'd followed the basin past the clump of trees and turned uphill to a rocky knoll but found no control, thinking I was still in the SW basin and heading north.
Next thing I bounced off the ruined fence! What the? Still thinking I was SW of the control, I turned NE, and found a control on a limestone sinkhole in a clearing. What the? The main place these can be found on the map is approx 600m NE of control 5, way past control 6 even. Oh bollocks!!!!!! Belted back to 5 with no trouble, and completed the rest of the course cleanly at what was for me a pretty fast pace, but the damage was done. Sad face :( I can't believe I threw 10 minutes away over my shoulder, just like that, by making such a rookie error. And then jumping to multiple conclusions; the very thing I am so careful not to do on a rogaine. Had fairly much stopped sulking at myself by the time we had driven back to Adelaide, but I can see just how hard I am going to need to concentrate in unfamiliar, subtle, Swedish terrain.