Second day in a row where it was advantageous to cheat and not go past the start control. :-(
Had another good start, but had a big wobble to #4 where I lost direction and got pushed to the left (30s), another wobble at #5 (wrong rock feature) before settling down again. Took the wrong route choice to #11, which Ake proved was fastest straight over the saddle (30s). Then okay again, with no further mistakes. I got a split on Ake (12 mins behind) finishing the last loop and realised I needed to go flat out as he was running about 30s faster at that stage. Gave it everything on the last few long legs and was almost collapsing in the finish run.
In the end, Ake made a couple of mistakes at the end, so I beat him by just under a minute, but the surprise was Brad who came in to win about 90s faster than me (SA Champ at age 16). The splits reveal that Brad went flying out of the start and opened the gap on the first 10 controls, all in the technical areas. I was catching towards the end, but I didn't have enough mins of mistakes to match his time. Next year.
Results
TE 5.0, Epoc 376, 1329 kcal.