Run race ((orienteering)) 1:44:45 [4] *** 11.1 km (9:26 / km) +655m 7:17 / km
spiked:17/20c
Over the last 18 months my confidence in my ability to handle long races has not been what it should be, mainly because I haven't really run a good long (90+ minutes) race since the 2009 Australian Championships. My confidence was particularly lacking coming into this, the longest day of the Croatia Open (and with an expected winning time of 80-90) - I can't remember the last time I was as nervous about this for a race, in a 'can I really do this?' sense rather than a 'can I get the result I'm looking for?' sense.
The warm-up, with soreness in both Achilles and hamstring, didn't help - although at least the conditions were again kind - but a wide track route choice on the first leg helped to settle me down (on a day when in general the long legs seemed to work reasonably well for me) and from then it turned into a reasonably normal race. It wasn't, though, to be a great navigational performance, with 2-3 minutes lost on a short leg at 7 in vegetation I couldn't quite make sense of. I got another boost around 10, a crossover point on the most obvious route choice, when I saw both Greg and Jamie and concluded I was close to the former and well ahead of the latter.
14 was a long leg with one major climb before the short final section. By now the muscles weren't quite right - they weren't quite right all day - and there were a couple of small mid-leg technical wobbles, but the engine was running reasonably well and for the first time in a while I was finishing a long race off physically. The disappointment was that I couldn't finish it off technically with a silly 2-minuter at 17, mistaking a cliff line for a track. (We don't often run on 1:15000 these days, especially in technical terrain, and I think my eyesight is starting to revert from well-above-normal to normal).
I can't call this a great run - no run with 5 minutes of mistakes is a great run (although Annichen Kringstad still managed to win WOC at Kooyoora despite exploring large parts of the state of Victoria during the course of her run) and my placing was only marginally better than on the earlier days. It will, however, do something for my confidence in being able to handle more races like this - especially as I didn't feel as shattered afterwards as I did after, say, Mount Ainslie.