Orienteering (Modderfontein Reserve) 1:41:44 15.9 km (6:24 / km) +242m5:57 / km ahr:158 max:175 spiked:17/21c weight:82.3kg shoes: Inov-8 X-Talon 212 Blue
Long-O Champs at Modderfontein Reserve 1:10'000 Brown, 13.2 km, 335m
Massive A3 map on non-waterproof paper (maybe should have been 1:15?). Had to take special care with folding it, but still lost some detail at the creases. A few competitors had issues with torn maps, etc. Southern regions had been nicely burnt for the first half, but sections of the final loop to the north were quite grotty.
Long leg out of the start gave a chance to get into the scale and map. No issues early on, just felt sluggish. Lost a little bit of time to #8 where I crossed the forest belt a bit too far to the right and had to come back left when back in the open. Then some very easy nav through 9,10 and 11 before a 2.5km long leg to #13. Went on the fairly straight route choice, but undergrowth on map extremely unreliable. Some dark greens were 100% runnable and you could get very (un)lucky and find some fields mowed, whilst others were 1m deep in weeds.
In general, they could have selected some more difficult control sites for some controls. Mix of leg lengths was quite fun. Something was very wrong with the map at #14 and it cost me 3 mins. Then a slog back to a very visible #15 which we'd seen running past 10 mins earlier.
#16 onwards was the grotty section. I tried to stay in the open as much as possible. Map unreliable here with new tracks and paths. Was a bit too far left on #19. Then we also a horrible double river crossing to get to #20 and back. Got lucky by finding a new path up the hill back to #21 that must have given me a couple minutes advantage on the split.
Overall managed to win with about 20 mins ahead of Nico. Garry M stepped down to Blue at the last minute, otherwise it might have been an interesting battle with his speed.