orienteering race (Lockwood Range) 57:23 [3] 6.0 km (9:34 / km)
(sick) shoes: Inov8 ORoc 280
I'd decided on Friday to drop down to the 6km course, but there was no way I was going to miss the famed/fabled Lockwood Granite. This was such a fun race - head south 2km through lovely open spur-gully (everyone went past me on the first erosion gully crossing and up the big hill, but I caught up with some of them again at the end of the leg) to a tiny patch of granite on the southern spur, where we had a map flip to the 1:2 000 section, then 3 6-800m butterfly loops through a pivot control with people going all over the place, then back to 1:10 000 for the northward journey home. At the end of the butterflies I could see Jenny Bourne's yellow Sprint Into Spring jersey ahead of me, and I chased it down over the next 3 controls, but then she took a better (i.e. track) route than me through the green regrowth and then by the time I'd managed to get across the big erosion Tony and Adrian had come past me and then my legs absolutely died in the last couple of controls and so they finished 2+ min ahead of me.
But hey, at least I got around pretty cleanly, and it was so much fun, thanks to Jim's one-man-band organisation (and Neil's mapping)! If I hadn't been sick all week, I think I'd have managed the 10km ok (had been looking forward to that) but even so, this is what orienteering's all about! Well not quite, it also involves administrative stuff like subsequently spending 4 hours in an OA Board Workshop, but I had procured an amazing burger from a street market just beforehand so this kept me quiet for a bit :)