Summer Series Haberfield

Arrived a little later than usual after popping in to my old workplace at Clarence St Cyclery to get a christmas present for myself (to be given to me though!) and also to catch up with my old work mates.

Quite a crowd with a special guest appearance from Striders president Action, who lives around the corner. As I was getting ready to go also saw the Striders MTG doing the dog track loop on their usual Wednesday afternoon run. Checking the results already posted and noticed that Ben Rattray, a seriously good Orienteer, had got the lot and was back close to 2 minutes early!

The controls were pretty well laid out with 3 clusters to entice you to the 3 corners of the map. Had a quick chat/brief with Action, warning him about navigation within Callan Park hospital before going to get changed.

Finally headed off at a good pace, aiming for the controls along the bay run all the way to Iron Cove Bridge, a slight oops in route selection at one control but pretty fast running. The plan coming back was up and through the hospital grounds, sarting off pretty well but then, not heeding my own previously mentioned advice, the wheels fell off with a serious misnavigation and a couple of minutes lost before getting back on track (circled on map). Then to make things worse while I was charging off trying to regain some time I stuffed up again and added probably close to 500m through initially running up the wrong street, but then not continuing and turning right, but back tracking (second circle).



From here everything fell back into place, but the damage was done timewise and I had to rule out visting the southern cluster of points. A real fast hit out on the way back to the finish with the last 500m done at 3:35 min/km pace according to the garmin!!

End result was 520 points but 1:02 late (just not fast enough in that last 500m) to see 20 points deducted for a net score of 500.

Stats
Distance 9.48km
Time 46:02
Avg Pace 4:51 (even after the stuffing around)
Avg HR 174

All in all it was not a good run with the nav problems, but I was very happy with the way I actually ran, the legs felt fresh and recovered after the hills on Tuesday and generated some good speed at the end.