Run ((orienteering)) 42:59 [3] *** 4.8 km (8:57 / km) +210m 7:21 / km
spiked:10/14c (sick)
Up in Canberra for a few days, which gave me the chance to "run" the Summer Series event at Red Hill - the quotation marks being required because, although I felt better during the day than I did yesterday, I still wasn't really up to running, especially uphill (had to walk most of 6 to 7, for example). A bit of technical interest was added by the option (which I took) of running on a map with only contours, termite mounds and rocks. With this map, there were some scary legs (especially 4 and 6, across a steep slope with lots of little gullies but no well-defined features); only had a few small wobbles. You do, however, lose out on the route choices through not knowing where the tracks and the green are (9-10, the long leg, could be run 90% on tracks if you knew where they were).
It was my first time in proper terrain (if you don't count Westgate Park) since the Victorian Relays, and I felt very tentative, especially on the steeper, more gravelly bits (of which the last control-to-finish leg was a fine example).
I went into this thinking there was a certain amount of potential for family scalp-claiming, and continued to think that through the course because I hadn't seen Cassie (who started a couple of minutes ahead of me), but it turned out I'd gone through her somewhere on the slope when she made a mistake (she ended up cutting it short because, I think, it was feeding time). Cassie's never beaten me in a competitive event, although she came close (82 to 84) when she was running up in M21 at the 2000 QB3 (not bad as I was in the World Cup team myself at that stage, and had had a decent run). Three weeks later she won the nationals by seven minutes, and four weeks after that things took a sudden turn for the worse...
Jim and I saw a snake while we were warming up. Decided not to upset Mum by telling her about it until afterwards....