Our first race day dawned fine and sunny, but chilly. We all bounced out of bed at sunup … ok ok, we all dragged ourselves out of bed some time before 10 am.  We began our intense preparations and routines, carefully fine tuning our bodies and minds for what lay ahead.  Simon snoozed on the couch in the sun, Ilze read her book, I went for my morning therapy walk, and Pete continued his battle with Optus to try and get Ilze’s phone to work with the new SIM.  We all ate lots of toast, then packed our stuff and headed off down the hill into town.

The Sprint arena was in the Steampunk playground, next to the foreshore. A chilly south wind kept the pleasant sunshine at bay as we huddled into our fleeces.  Race numbers pinned to running tops (mine is 16001, nice and easy to remember), speculation about the finish controls, greeting friends, joining the loo queue, resisting the urge to eat sausages before the run (they smell so good!), and waiting for the first finishers to appear, so we can glean some information about the courses – all part of an orienteering carnival.  It’s lovely to relax and know that if anything goes wrong, it’s Someone Else’s Problem.

Thanks to my ongoing vestibular problems, I’m doing the Easy courses, alongside the 12 year olds and the beginners. Navigation was never going to be a problem; I was hoping that I could run a bit so that I wasn’t too far off the pace. There were only three entrants anyway so I was guaranteed a place.  My biggest concern was missing one of the 29 controls – over 2.2 km, they were going to come up thick and fast!

The other problem with Easy courses is that you tend to overthink them – “that can’t be my control, it’s too obvious”.  All I had to do was give the map a quick glance to see whether I was going left, right or straight ahead; look up and spot the flag, which was generally about 50 metres away; and head straight to it.  I was pleased to discover I was pretty comfortable running; I didn’t need to read the map much at all.  Oddly, the lady who started ahead of me seemed at a bit of loss when it came to map reading – she was fast enough, but she kept shooting off in the wrong direction, only to pop up at the next control from a strange angle. It was very tortoise and hare, as I made my way steadily through the controls without putting a foot wrong, and keeping up my slow jog. Every time I thought she’d got away from me, she would reappear either just ahead, or behind me. She was even confused with the last couple of controls, which were on a track, in a straight line – couldn’t be simpler. I finished hard on her heels, still running, having made up a minute on her – not last!! Even better, my time was under 19 minutes, and I felt relatively good at the end. Officially second.

I could have coped with a harder course, but I was happy with my choice as it minimised the map reading required, and allowed me to run and have fun. Tomorrow’s Long course in the forest will be a whole new challenge.