orienteering 1:20:09 [5] 8.9 km (9:00 / km) +370m 7:27 / km
Northern Champs, Bigland.
My calf was no trouble at all. It still felt like very hard work and it was all heavy going right from the start. I had no trouble finding controls but I was a bit wayward on my routes in some places.
#3 drifted higher up the slope than necessary.
#4 climbed up and over the spur in front of the control and had to descend quite a long way into the re-entrant.
#5 I took a leftward line through the crossing points which I thought saved a bit of climb but I'm not so sure now. At 5 I came across Nigel Bunn looking puzzled. He then kept disappearing and appearing all the way to 15 but I tried not to take too much notice of him.
#9 I switched off on the first part of the leg, thinking about other things probably, and missed the crossing point to the right, costing maybe 45 seconds.
#12 I spiked the control, getting ahead of Nigel in the process and also catching Andy Thorpe at this point. From there onwards Nigel and Andy were running together and I was struggling to stay near them. They got away on the climb to #15
#16 I got onto the ridge much lower than I thought I was going to, and found myself under the large west facing crag just south of the control. Fortunately for me this was a pretty obvious feature to relocate on and it only cost me a few seconds hesitation.
#17 dithered about what route I was going to take and climbed up too much hill at the start of the leg.
5th on the course, 3rd M45. Not Northern Champion.
1. Clive 73:03
2. Charlie 75:54
3. Stevie B 76:35
4. Jase 79:45
5. Me 80:09
6. Peter Ward 80:17
7. Ben Stansfield 80:52
Pleased to squeeze in ahead of Peter and Ben, just got ahead of them at 17.