Run race ((orienteering)) 56:19 [4] *** 7.7 km (7:19 / km) +420m 5:45 / km
spiked:14/16c
State Series opener at Hepburn. A steepish area (although it could have been a lot worse), mostly downhill in the first half and uphill in the second.
Felt a bit better running than yesterday but still well below par uphill, and the result showed it - I barely made it into the State Series points (10th). The competition was tight - only 2.40 between 3rd and 10th - but I'm definitely back in the bunch at the moment. I'm not quite sure why my form has been so poor in recent weeks - I know I did myself a fair bit of damage in the heatwave but surely the effects of that wouldn't linger this long? Whatever the cause, I definitely hope I'll have worked through it by Easter.
Dropped a minute or so at 5. I don't think it was quite in the right place (instead being in an unmapped watercourse 20 metres away from the mapped one), but that accounted for at most 5 of the 60 seconds.
Good to see a deep field, including some we haven't seen a lot of at this level for a while, like Schweppes and Hayden Lebbink (both of whom were in the minute ahead of me today). Hayden's spent more time of late in the business of driving another Fox.
Run race ((orienteering)) 25:08 [4] *** 3.3 km (7:37 / km) +135m 6:19 / km
spiked:12/13c
Doubling up for a sprint, which was a bit more than a sprint - multiple loops which made for some interesting mix-and-match as far as head-to-head battles were concerned. Probably my best run of the three over the weekend, which may or may not have had something to its being the most technical and least steep of the three courses; only one minor miss at 8, but did have to work hard on the climb to the finish. Caught Kathryn 1 minute fairly early on and spent the rest of the course trying to get away; never quite did (blowing my best chance to do so at 8) but was able to hold her out at the end.
This was definitely a worthwhile racing weekend, but it underlined (more than last week, where illness was an excuse) that I'm currently some way short of my standard from last year. (On the subject of last year, there's a fairly significant question mark as to how much will be left of Hervey Bay by, say, Wednesday).