Orienteering race (Qld Champs) 1:06:16 [5] *** 6.81 km (9:44 / km) +125m 8:55 / km
13c shoes: Inov-8 X-Talon 212 #3
Day 1 at Cascades.
Decent run, I just wanted to get around cleanly and was not too focused on speed. As a consequence, I was taking some quite safe routes and triple checking my decisions which ended up costing me some time. But I guess I would rather lose small bits of time like this than getting lost.
I tend to start of slowly and get into the map and then speed up as the run progressed. So already on the 1st control, I had lost 30s to Winnie. Around to the right on the way to #2 cost me another minute. And being very slow, cautious and indecisive through the vague stuff to #3 and I was already 4mins behind Win. Going to #4 was fine but I lost time hunting in the circle and did a small extra loop looking in the gully next to it because I came into it too low and missed it. The next 3 were fine and by #7 I was 15s in front, but 3 and a bit minutes lost over the next 2 controls put me behind again. Almost stopped short on the way to #8 as my exit wasn't precise and clean and then I wasn't quite focused enough and almost got caught hunting in a group of rocks before it. Again on #9, my exit wasn't clean, so I was very unsure and slow throughout the leg. Then going into the circle, I entered from the wrong direction in an attempt to avoid the steep rocky stuff and then was slow picking out the right rock. The rest was mostly good, though should've gone to the track sooner and pushed harder there on the way to #12, and also not gone in so soon as I would've had to go through less rocks, but I guess I couldn't just run the wrong way up the finish chute. Was weird having such a major dog leg there, when they could've just spun the finish around like for Sunday, but oh well.
This was heaps of fun though and gave me a lot of stuff to work on.