orienteering race (MSW 2 Deakin Uni) 25:44 [4] 3.2 km (8:02 / km)
shoes: Asics Kayano 24
Not feeling much better this afternoon, which was a shame because I'd been looking forward to running on the campus where we attended a home-schooling conference in 1984 (yes, it has changed a bit). Straight out of the start was the tricky decision leg and I simply didn't see the stairs up to the overpass, thought there would be some on the other side of it according to the map, but all that was mapped was the upper level and since I was running underneath, the stairs I was looking for weren't there and the route right around to the southern end of the impassable wall was a very long way and that lost me a minute and a half straight up. On 2 I went into the wrong courtyard and had to go around, on 6 I simply didn't understand the impassable wall at all or that I was already beyond the end of it or that the control was inside the building. The artifical barriers in the 'maze' section at the southern end annoyed me because they forced route choices up/down horrible vertiginous stairs, and I was particularly frustrated by 18 where I ran to the end of the undercover area on the running level, as shown on the map, and there was no control because in fact it was one level below, down the stairs, but this was absolutely not obvious from either the map or the descriptions. After that I made some other suboptimal route choices, but had already lost about 4 min by then so hey, what did it matter, my feeling of impostor syndrome was already complete. A pity, because it was a really interesting map & course and I'd like to go back there and explore it properly on a more relaxed day. Think I am just trying to keep too much stuff in my head lately - worrying about parents, work, ARC...