Orienteering 36:00 [3] 3.9 km (9:14 / km)
COC Middle Champs - M35
What a roller coaster. Up until #12 I was having the best middle race I can remember. Was a little confused and slow going to #1, but stayed on the right line and the flag eventually appeared, then everything else in the detail just kept showing up exactly where I wanted.
Nick appeared #5, having made a mistake early and looked like he was going to pull away until I thought to myself, no - you can keep up. So I did.
I snuck into #12 ahead of him and then promptly turned my brain off. Did the classic, 'the hard stuff is done now, the rest of the course is moderate at best' and promptly lost 4 minutes on a basic rough bearing to an obvious catching feature leg.
Then did the even more classic, try to run faster to 'get the time I lost back' and skipped a control in the last loop. 2 rookie errors back to back.
If I'd just sat with Nick in the final loop, I would have finished in a very respectable 32 mins, 2 or 3rd overall and the top podium position.
But strangely, I'm not upset at all. I came into the week with very low expectations, I hadn't raced since Spring 2016 or done a multi day carnival since Summer 2015. I expected my navigation to be garbage and no idea how my running would fare - I was definitely not expecting to write 'running the best race I can remember' at any point.
What I'm taking from this is that my current training (ie barbells, pull ups, EMOMS and shit) is enough to keep me competitive at M35 in NA - and that's totally fine with me. I know I could never go back to 5-6 days a week of purely running (mainly alone due to my 'non-traditional' work hours).
It isn't enough to be competitive in Long races (or anything over say 1:15-ish), but I can only count 3 Long races I've ever enjoyed, so - that's fine too. Next time, I'll make the point to get into the woods once or twice beforehand to dust off the cobwebs, so I skip the learning curve on the first couple of races.