I’m sure you are all in suspense for the outcome of the final race!  Back at ANU, the car loaded for the drive home.  Same arena, but this time we would be on the south end of the map. What a luxury to have such a complex area, large enough for 2 separate maps!  The terrain was a little different as it had a couple of hills, and more open spaces between the buildings.  It was still damn tricky.

One of the “rules” is to watch where people go after they pick up their maps, to give yourself a clue as to the direction of the first control.  In this race, everyone I watched pick up their maps, stopped!  They all seemed to spend a bit of time getting the first leg sorted out, which was a bit worrying.  As it turned out, the first leg was really easy once you got out of the immediate area.  In fact, it all went really well right through to no 9 – I was reading the map well and picking up the fine details that allowed short cuts.  8 to 9 was straightforward enough, but for some reason I got disoriented a little, and went to the wrong building.  I soon realised my mistake, less than a minute lost.  No 10 also looked easy, but this time I ran past my building to the next one, which was the same shape.  Confidently ran into the corner, to find no control!  I hunted all along the front in each alcove, to no avail.  Finally realising my error, I quickly corrected, but lost a couple of valuable minutes, and some self esteem.

The rest of the course was clean, some good route choice options to grapple with, and a nice run in.  Satisfied, I waited for Ian.  After his blistering run yesterday we were expecting big things to finish off.  Knowing his start time, and looking at the results board, I knew what time he needed to finish by to figure in the top few.  That time slipped past with no sign of him.  More seconds went by, then minutes.  This was not good – was he injured?  Finally he appeared, 5 minutes down on the leaders.  A huge 180 degree error after no 10 had cost him the race.  When we checked the splits, he was in the lead at that point!  Victory was not to be.  Still he was hugely satisfied with 4th overall, and a win in this race would not have moved him any further up the standings.

Enthusiasm high, we discussed going to streetO later that evening, as we would be passing through on our way home.  Luckily sense prevailed after 7 long hot hours of sitting in the car …