Run race ((orienteering)) 2:25:31 [4] *** 14.6 km (9:58 / km) +550m 8:23 / km
spiked:26/33c
NOL Long at Belanglo. I was expecting this to be a long race from the start and was mentally preparing for something in the order of two hours. As soon as we hit the eucalypt it was time to reassess expectations; the eucalypt part of Belanglo has greened up a lot since I was last here in 1996, and two hours was going to be conservative. With my lack of a base this meant I also made my pace conservative, perhaps a bit too conservative as I was caught early by Michael Adams.
My line into 3 was poor, unable to find a good way down the cliffs, but otherwise I was solid technically for the first 13. It certainly didn't take long to realise that the map had serious printing problems, with dot point features (principally boulders and high points) barely visible (they printed at about the size of a single rocky ground dot), and cliff line gaps, important here, also hard to see. (The green was also fairly meaningless - almost the whole eucalypt area was light green, and the mapped green wasn't discernably worse than anything else). Shep went through me (six minutes) at 13, a little later than I expected (turned out he'd lost time early). I had my first time loss at 14, 30 seconds or so, and then a more significant one at 17, one of the aforementioned invisible knolls, with about 2.5 minutes gone. Jules (who also lost time here) went through me and I didn't expect to see him again, so I was quite surprised when he went through me again 30 minutes later at 23 (he'd lost major time at 18 and 21).
We hit the spectator control, with what I thought was about 30 minutes to go. I was together with Steve Todkill at that point and holding up OK physically, and edged away from him over the next few controls before losing it again with a 90-second mistake at 29 (my fault this time, although the map print again didn't help). The last few controls were fearsome with two gorge crossings; I couldn't run much up the steep hills, but otherwise held it together to the finish.
I can't say I was really racing here, but at least I got through a very long and physical race which will count for a bit later on. As a WOC trial it was disappointing; I don't have a problem with a long WOC trial (in fact I think it should be set to a winning time of 105 or thereabouts, since that's what WOC races have actually been won in in recent years more often than not), but I do have a problem with it being held on such a badly printed map.