Overnight the heavens opened and the rain hammered down. It eased up before dawn, but was still drizzling steadily, and Mt Wellington was nowhere to be seen. We’d planned to admire the views from Mt Nelson after the morning race, but quickly ditched that idea! Everyone huddled in their cars waiting for their start, from the car park at Hobart College. Most of the courses were in the bushland surrounding the campus, with only a small section in the school. There was also a “maze”, though that turned out to simply be a grid of 16 controls, of which you had to punch 4 or 5 – there were no tapes between the flags so it was very easy and didn’t add much to the course. The tracks were flowing with water and it was hard to distinguish them from the creeks! It made the going pretty slow and added a lot to the nominal distances. After doing a loop through the bush, we came back into the school for a couple of controls, then back into the bush, then back to the school. It took me 80 minutes and 6 kms – not exactly short! In fact it was far longer than any of the courses I did last week.

Soaked to the skin, we beat a hasty retreat home to wash and dry clothes and have lunch, before gearing up for the next race the same afternoon. This was the notorious Pittwater Dunes, which I last tackled 9 years ago with less than optimal results. Hopeful that the course setting would be sprint style and straightforward, seeing as the races were meant to be SHORT, I was looking forward to it.

The rain was coming in horizontally as the wind whipped up off the beach. It was a 1 km trudge to the start. I kept my raincoat on this time. I headed to my first control without being able to formulate much of a plan, as I couldn’t see a good attack point. Needless to say it didn’t go well, and it took me 20 minutes to find it. The next 4 were fine, though slow – the tracks were soft sand and hard to run on. I came unstuck again at no 6, relocated and found it but had wasted a lot more time. No 7 was in the middle of a pine plantation. By now I’d spent a lot of time on the tracks and my foot was really sore. No 8 was just off another track, but I couldn’t find the jumping off point, and went past. By the time I realised, it was too late; I’d been out so long already that I wasn’t going back for it. I hate not finishing! But sometimes you just have to know when to pull the pin, and not do any more long term damage.

These races were not what I expected; if you’re going to have two in one day, then they should be shorter than normal, and in fast terrain with lots of short legs. We got that in the first race, but not in the two today. Of course the rain caused most of the problems this morning by washing out all the tracks, but it had little effect this afternoon. I would have expected winning times of about 20 minutes but they are quite a bit longer. We didn’t have a choice of courses; it was just whatever your age group is. Let’s hope for better things tomorrow – at least the rain is expected to ease back to “possible showers”. Apparently we have just experienced a once in a decade rain event. Again …