Coalfields Classic National Orienteering League Race 13 & WOC Trials (13/05/2012)

M21E 17th

It was either sit around, do nothing and get bored, or start the race and see how my calf could handle a longer bush race, knowing that I would not be competitive on the result board.

This was always going to be a long day with a 18.1km course. It turned out to be possibly my longest ever NOL race time at 154 minutes.

At jogging speed, I never experienced any calf pain on the course, so I kept going. When I tried to run faster on the tracks, it was certainly tight, so I just had keep it slow. A logical exit point may have been after 14, but I was still enjoying it, so I kept going. Simply by being out for over 140minutes, I started to tire on the way to 26, but at that stage there was only 1km to go.

I was happy with my route choice on the long leg to 6, taking the left hand route out to the road.

I found that not being in race mode negatively impacted my navigation. It was not one of my better technical efforts. I suspect that I lost 2 mins on 1, 30s on 8, 2mins on 11, 1min on 13, 1min on 16, 1min on 17, 3 mins on 26, 30s on 27 and 30s on 28. The errors certainly crept in towards the end when I was not really orienteering, but just jogging in survival mode.

26 was a stupid control site in the middle of dark green, where the feature was not visible. This was not at all fair.
27 reminded me of the Miner's Despair map - the control was on a feature that was not legible on the map