Forest Orienteering race 45:26 [4] ***** 4.2 km (10:49 / km) +45m 10:16 / km
shoes: Inov-8 Oroc 280
NOL Middle - Rowdy Flat. M17-20E - 2nd place
Felt good when I turned up to race today, knee was feeling good and legs felt fresh. Started out slow out of the start triangle and picked up the track through the marsh. Struggled to read the mess that was control number 1 and had to slow down further. Made sure I nailed number 1 and then took the next few quite slow to make sure I made no errors. A little off on the way to 4 and then lost 20 secs in the circle at 5. Poor bearing out of 5 and was pushed wide. Here is where I jumped off a high embankment and landed on my ankle. Unfortunately the tape wasn’t enough to stop rolling my ankle fully but I was still able to run. This + a small hesitation just before the control meant another loss of around 20-30 secs. Slow to 7 while I got back into it and then a conservative route along the track to 8. Starting to feel more confident on the way to 9 and then smooth to 10 and 11. Good route to 12, nailed the control and then tracked it to 13 (losing a little time on the exit from 12). Route to 14 was good, but took it very slow when I got down into the green. 15 was the worst control of the day. I found it really hard to interpret the map and got to a 50/50 point and took the wrong option, losing around 1 min 30 secs (if not more). Was frustrated with this mistake and rushed myself on the way to 16, making another 30 second error. Really happy with my route to 17 and picked up some good speed. Went to 8 from 17 and got confused but recovered fairly well to finish the leg well (lost 15 secs). As I climbed up the embankment to 19 I noticed a small pack behind me and then I made an error to 20 and allowed them to catch up. From here I finished quite strongly, managing to stay ahead of the pack that had formed behind me.
Moderately happy with this race. Firstly it was the best run i have ever had on Rowdy Flat (having run there twice before). Also I minimised all errors to fewer than 2 minutes and managed to main in contact with the map for majority of the race. I was disappointed that I made lots of small errors though, most were due to misinterpretation of the map and not taking enough time to read the necessary detail. My bearings were all quite good except for to 4 so I was pretty happy with that.
Ankle was very when i warmed down and had swollen up by the time I took my shoe off. Did the classic rest, ice and elevation and planned to strap well tomorrow and use panadol for the pain. One of the biggest positives of today was that there was no knee pain in the warm up, race or cool down.