orienteering race (Heathcote Hagaby) 1:43:20 [3] 9.9 km (10:26 / km)
shoes: Inov8 Oroc spikes
Mass start race, two loops one approx 3km with splitting along the creek channel and going only a little way up the hill then the next loop about 7km starting along the creek then going up the ridge & into a valley which we went up & down the steep sides of about 5 times due to the 'butterfly' loops before crossing over the main ridgeline and making our way via a sequence of common controls back down into town. The interesting thing about the map was that a lot of it wasn't mapped: i.e. no detail on the western face and a line of rocks marked along the ridgelines but little else in the way of detail apart from creek channels. It worked, though! No surprises that I was a fair way back before even finishing the first loop but I did see Anna Dowling when climbing the hill, although I was too far right on the first two ascents and lost a minute or so each time, then on the 3rd (hunting for the pit on the ridgeline) deliberately aimed left, but confused myself when I got to the ridge and because it was quite flat thought I must be too far right already and went further left, ending up back at a control I'd been to already - oops, that's 5 min wasted. From then on I was running around the same pace as an older guy who was better than me at going up hills (I had to walk a lot because my groin wasn't very cooperative) but I had a few cleaner routes than him toward the end and gradually gained back enough so that it was a sprint along the creek at the very end with a dead-heat finish for something like 29th place, much to Jim's amusement.
Can't believe how un-race-fit I am and also how much I enjoyed this weekend despite that fact...