Run race ((orienteering)) 53:44 [4] *** 6.5 km (8:16 / km) +210m 7:07 / km
spiked:17/20c
Australian Relays at Littlechild, third leg for the second Victorian team. Thought I might have had a bit of an advantage through not having raced 14.5k yesterday, and felt pretty lively warming up, but not so lively once I got going. Started further back than I would have hoped, in eighth place and three minutes behind anyone else, but was expecting to run down SA, Queensland and the third Victorian team.
The start was a bit slow and I took a bit of time finding the marked creek crossing (a crucial part of orienteering here) at 2, then wobbled a bit on the long third, losing track of things a bit across the open marshes. Started to get into the running side of things there, almost made a parallel error at 6 but caught myself, then dropped 30 seconds in the circle at 8. After two-thirds of the course on my own, caught sight of Mat McGuire on the way to 14, passed him but promptly missed 30 seconds on the control, then caught him again. We then had a tough rocky section and I thought Mat's strategy would probably be to stay on me and hope to outsprint me. He was perhaps 30 metres behind me at the final creek crossing with 500 metres to go; I thought I would probably get it from there, but Mat had a long split to make sure of it. Didn't quite catch Aaron, who had a better run than he (or us) expected, and ended up 6th.
This was a good carnival even if I was pretty disappointed with my own performance, in what was a pretty disappointing season for me (partly through getting sick or injured at inopportune moments). After a year like that you always hope for a better year next year, but time might be running out there.