orienteering race (WMOC long qual 1) 1:07:03 [4] 5.1 km (13:09 / km) +185m 11:08 / km
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
Oh boy, I hope I never have to do a rogaine in weather as wet as it was for the 3 hours before I ran today! Actually it had just stopped raining by the time I started but everything was awash - the tracks, the marshes, the tiny streams chanelling water from one marsh to the next. So it was good & sloshy, and there was tracking everywhere. I managed to get completely confused fairly early on the long north-easterly first leg - entirely my fault, but I crossed a marsh at a narrow point 90 degrees to where I'd intended to cross, climbed some cliffs without really reading what the contours beyond would do, and then when I found a random boulder panicked and thought I''d overshot the second north-running track when in fact I hadn't even reached it yet. So I turned back to the west, and sure enough I found a track, but there was a medium-sized lake below it! I'd come back to the first track...which would have been an ok route if I'd deliberately taken it from the beginning.
Probably didn't lose as much time on this leg as I'd first thought, because the person who started 2 minutes after me only caught me here (and only gained another 2 min on me for the rest of the couse, despite trying to hang on to Yvonne Gunell for all of leg 3-4). Tracks only got you halfway towards the control anyhow, and then I was oh-so-careful in picking off every little feature - mainly small knolls - on the way to the control. And I employed this approach on all of the other legs, with only a few small wobbles in control circles when I couldn't spot the boulder because it was hidden by greenery. Towards the end of the course some of the small knolls were marked as clearings, having granite underneath, and these were good to read if I kept a close eye on my compass. I couldn't really run through the famous Gothenburg marsh grass anyway, but at least I don't mind having my feet wet. Which is a good thing because in some parts of the finish chute I was up to my knees in mud, mud, glorious mud...
22nd, which is all right, but I'd like to creep inside the top 20. Good race by Clare Hawthorne to come 8th which I think she can improve upon with a cleaner run! I was surprised how hammered my legs (particularly knees) were afterwards and need to find a way of running more efficiently tomorrow and navigating proactively rather than reactively. Vanessa talked about channelling her inner gazelle; perhaps I could find my inner guanaco?
The sun came out in the afternoon so we detoured via the botanic gardens on the way home. Very nicely laid out, extending up a valley between (what else?) two granite ridges. So of course there is a rock garden section, with an artificial waterfall. Pity the rhododendrons have already bloomed, though.