Orienteering race (French O Champs) 1:07:13 [5] *** 7.9 km (8:31 / km) +251m 7:21 / km
spiked:10/13c shoes: VJ Bold O-shoes
French Orienteering Championships, H55, 23rd place (from 70+ competitors). Starting and finishing in a ski station is always a reliable sign of a tough race! And so this one proved. The map was okay, the terrain was steep and rocky, and the planning was pretty ordinary. Th navigational challenges were minimal - basically run along a track and duck in to collect the control, then back out to the track. Still, I managed to stuff up the first couple of controls. For #1, I miscounted the number of ski tracks to cross and found myself in the wrong forest compartment. Dropped 3-4 mins there. Then a long downhill run to #2 was fine but then was on the wrong spur for the control. Dropped another 1-2 mins there. The rest were fine with the exception of #10 where I lost 1 min by coming in off th track too early. The major problem, however, was physical. The long climb from #4 up to the trac to run towards #5 was too tough for me - despite walking the steep climb, I still ran out of legs towards the end of the long track run and my back started to tighten up quite badly. Really struggled for the last third of the course and walked all the uphills and jogged the downhills. Disappointing run in the end, which was a shame as had done some (but not enough) training. The mistakes didn't help as they were quite simple legs. Should have been in the top 15 without the errors, even with the slow running.