Orienteering race 48:44 [4] 4.3 km (11:20 / km) +200m 9:12 / km
shoes: Brooks Cascadia 5
Easter 3-Days - Day 2 at Mt Alexander. My only runs here were the Vic champs in 84 and WOC carnival in 85, so my memories were steep, rocky and hard. Today was so much more enjoyable and not nearly as hard, either physically or navigationaly as I was expecting. Loved the area and the course.
I climbed early on 1 and then meant to contour into the control but climbed too far and had to relocate on the clearing to the NE of the control and come back and down. Pleased with 2 and 3 but nearly stuffed 4. I went up to the top right of the boulders and stuck my head up, thought its too flat up here and more like a rock face than a boulder cluster so started back down, but then decided to go back up through the rocks and have another look - and there was the flag. I went too straight on 5 and should have run the clearings. Ended up climbing early on but the second half was fast. I came through the clearings to the NE of the control but didn't concentrate enough and overran the control by about 100m. Spent about a minute stuffing around before realising where I was. I had a good route to 6 except I couldn't climb over a bare rock in the gully before the control. My shoes kept slipping - spikes would have made the difference - so in the end I had to run down to the bottom of e bare rock to get around it. Felt very tired going up the slope towards 7 but got going again across the flat. Hesitated a bit on the diagonal down towards 9 - I was expecting to see the huge boulders but they were in behind some pine trees. Finally saw a big bare rock in the distance and felt confident to keep going down. Nothing worse than going too far down the hill and then having to climb back up. No big losses in the last part but should have run all the way up the hill to 11. Other than seeing Geoff Todkill near 9 and Tony Garr at 13 I didn't see anyone else on my course.