Run race ((orienteering)) 1:12:10 [3] *** 7.0 km (10:19 / km) +145m 9:21 / km
spiked:10/14c
Deep down I didn't really expect to get to the start line today, so in that sense to get to the finish line was a bonus, but finishing was about the only positive to take out of today.
I didn't sleep well; 10 last night was not a great time to have the thought occur to me that in the current atmosphere, if Australia has an Anders Breivik (and various media and political identities are doing their darndest to create one), local climate scientists are one of the groups he or she might take an interest in. In any case I was getting up at 5 for a 5.15 phone hookup that ended up falling through.
Today was my early start day (everyone gets one), and I arrived at the assembly area to be greeted by very few people and pouring rain. (It was a moist unstable easterly which was dumping rain on the first bit of topography it hit, which happened to be next to us; the campground, 10km closer to the coast, appears to have had next to nothing). The rain eased and setting off for the start - after struggling to walk first thing in the morning - suggested that a jog would be possible, even if requiring the consumption of some industrial-strength HTFU (not on the WADA banned list as far as I know).
With a bad knee, the last thing I needed was lots of rocky ground, but lots of rocky ground is what we got today - almost relentless for the first half of the course. I couldn't really run in the rock at all with any sort of fluency (I suspect I would have struggled to run fluently in it even without an injury, although being able to lift your legs properly would certainly be a help).
With the difficulty of making progress through the terrain, my mind wasn't really on the job. I hit 1 and 2 right on without being especially confident about it, but 3 was straight out of my long list of O-ringen day 2 debacles, and like many of the previous ones it happened in a flat area with formlines, boulders and very little else. You'd think I'd learn after 20 years (perhaps I have learned a little bit because I only lost six minutes instead of the 20+ of the equivalent occasions in 1989, 1991 and 1998). Had a bit more confidence in the hillier areas but then totally lost confidence again going back into the flat area at 7, ultimately not going too far off line but being so tentative about it that I probably lost a couple of minutes in the process. Took advantage of a long track option on 8 - I'd had more than enough of the rock by then - and finished off a bit better, although blown away for speed by a couple of others over the closing controls (and by sundry M/W10s in the finish chute).
I knew that I wouldn't be competitive today, and even without mistakes I still wasn't going to be competitive; the only real goal was to get into the chasing start on Friday. That should at least be fun, but getting into the top half of the field is about the best I can hope for now. Past experience with this type of injury suggests that it shouldn't be too bad by Wednesday (it's improved somewhat even in the course of this afternoon).
Organisation fail of the day: whoever it was on the Bollnas local council (or whichever other body was responsible) who thought that the day O-ringen was in town was a good day to close half the access road down periodically for lawn-mowing on the verges.