The carnival that we’ve come for is the Oceania Championships for the elites, who are vying for selection to the World Champs.  For us plebs, it’s a series of four races with a cumulated score.  All four races count, so there is no dropping your worst result.

Race 1 was in Tuggerah, at a small school campus which featured multiple levels on a slope.  There was plenty of complexity, with lots of stairs, ramps, canopies, small garden beds etc.  Most courses had butterfly loops and map flips, to eke out the distance.  My course, being the shortest, was all on one map, so there was a bit of visual disentangling needed to follow the red line.  The map was readable and I thought the course setting was fair – tricky, but no traps.  My plan was to find a feasible route and execute it correctly, rather than second guess myself looking for a slightly shorter way.  It seemed to work, as I had a clean run except for my no 7, where I was too far west in an area with a lot of visible controls.

Ian surprised himself (but no-one else) with a third place, behind Ted who won.  He’s done pretty much no training, and hasn’t run on a complex map since Antwerp, but somehow he got it right and finished near the top of the leaderboard.  We all enjoyed it.

We had time to come home for lunch and a rest before race 2.

My map: