The fun was over, now it was time to get serious. Series 2 of the World cup events was to be held in Canberra, capital of Australia. There are many types of terrain in Oz, but there are two that are fairly unique to this part of the world: gully/spur and big granite. Gully/spur as its name suggests is made up of interlocking broad spurs with various depth re-entrants between. This type of terrain is almost always eucalypt forest with very little on the ground to slow progress, so it is usually very fast indeed.4.5 - 5 min per km for the top people. The big granite terrain is again eucalypt forest but this time the runnability can be very varied. But the big difference is the boulders. The word "boulders" does not quite get across the difference between the Irish version and the Oz type. Let me explain. Any boulder less than 2 metres high (!!) is not marked on the map, as it would confuse things too much Some of the "boulders" are 20 to 30 metres high, the size of small hotels, and are very common.indeed. You might think that with things that big it must be easy to navigate, but there are thousands of boulders on the maps of various gigantic sizes, and fallen trees and spiny bushes everywhere.

My training was not going to plan. I had not "clicked " into the mapping and the terrain, and was carrying an annoying injury which I picked up hurdle training. By now Marcus Pinker had arrived and was improving his fitness in leaps and bounds. Bill Edwards was coming over via New Zealand but had let us know he was carring an injury that was serious and was preventing him training.

So I went into the first World Cup Short Distance race not confident of my navigating and not fully fit.

Day 1, Honysuckle Creek, Short distance race in medium granite terrain.

It had been announced a couple of days earlier that an anonymous person had donated 100 dollars to the man and woman with the fastest run-in split (last control to the finish). This was not good - the last thing I wanted was to be thinking about the run in while I'm in a complex area during a World Cup race!! So I tried to put it to the back of my mind. But the" run in" was right up my street, 220 metres on a path!!

We had to nominate a person for the early, middle and late start time blocks. Marcus being the short distance specialist got to go last , so I would go in the last block for the long distance. Bill would therefore go in the middle in both races.

So I got third start position, with only an inexperienced Kiwi and a Brit in front 2 mins apart. The first control was a very short leg and by the time I had orientated my map and found where I was I had passed the control (as many others were to do) then thrashed around for another minute or so before finding no.1. Not too bad, you might think, but the leg was done in about 35 seconds by someone, and I was over 2 minutes so I took four times as long, a very bad error!! I then settled down but knew I had made a serious error, another route error on no. 6 dropped another 2 minutes Shortly after I caught the kiwi I was immediately caught by an Auzzie who started behind me and a real race got going. We then caught the Brit and got away from him as well as the kiwi. I started navigating well under pressure and suddenly found myself running to the last control, and the' run in'. I punched the last control in the lead and I was the first person to do the run in in the World cup race. Many people knew me from Australia and as I was the first back the cheers and roars from the commentary team were very encouraging. Uphill to start then a flat even surface, so I let rip and suprised even myself with my speed!! I finished in a time of about 37 mins , and my run in was 35 seconds: as usual I could have been about 5-6 mins faster, but that's normal for me! I had a long wait to find out how I had done in the world cup and the "Honeysuckle Hundred" as it came to be known.

Bill was next of the Irish and finished in a similar time to me only to find out that he had skipped a leg, and was disqualifed. This is not the first time this has happened to Bill at a major event. So it was down to Marcus to get an Irish boy into the top 20 , as was very possible, but Marcus also got Bill's syndrome and skipped a leg then took a long time to figure out why nothing fitted and had no chance of coming back from a 10 minute error, finishing 55th.

By now most of the top people had come in and my 35 seconds was looking good,the only person who looked really fast was Thomas Jensen from Denmark who, by the way, was caught on video jogging slowly to the last control then unleashing a mighty effort to do 37 seconds (you can check the splits ,I tried hard on all the lead up legs) so my time was not to be beaten and I'm once again "The Run-in King"(and a hundred dollars richer).

The second event was a two day event with a chasing start on the second day, fastest to go first. Day one was gully/spur with a difference: the visibility was very low and caught lots of people out. It was also quite long, which was reflected in the times. I was caught early on by a couple of fast guys then my contact lens was flipped out by a branch and I amazingly found it, cleaned it and put it back in after a few attempts, but my lift was gone so I ploughed on and went quite well, then was passed by the two guys who had caught me earlier!! We then caught two others and a train was formed until we all made a mistake and I made the wrong choice and went to my right instead of left ,4 minutes later got the control but was also getting very tired, and finished 46th. I wasn't looking forward to a much longer and technically harder day tomorrow. Marcus had a relapse and missed a short leg, then ran almost a kilometre uphill before realising and dropped about 10 minutes again!!! So he finished in the fifties (sorry I've no detailed results- the junior coach is looking at them) Bill was unable to run due to injury.

Day two of World cup two was on " Big Badja" a Big Granite area with fast runability in most parts. As leader from day one Denmark's Allan Mogensen (1993 World Champ) was away first followed closely by Timo Karppinen ,and then a bunch of other Scandinavians. I started about 16 minutes down and felt tired straight away. There were three loops to do of about 4.5 km each. I made one bad error on the first loop but navigated O.K. on this very complex area. The second loop did not go as well and I was suffering from fatigue, so making mistakes worse. Somwhere on the second loop Marcus who had started 8 minutes behind me had caught and passed me without my seeing him. I know this 'cause I caught him on the start of the third loop and, in trying to get away from him, made a huge error and dropped too far back to catch him. I did, however, have a good battle with the leading Kiwi right up to the run-in: you can all guess the result there! . So Marcus ended in 48th and I was 49th - who would have predicted that I would beat Marcus in the Short and he would have beaten me in the Long? Tore Sandvik from Norway won the Men's race followed by Holger Hott Johanson from Norway, who by the way is getting married this September to Sandy Smith from Canada, and they will live in Norway. Look out for Sandy at the next World Champs!!

All in all this was an excellent set of World Cups, on superb terrain, very good mapping and a friendly atmosphere with all the teams staying at the Australian Institute of Sport , a brilliant facility. Marcus and I got two top 60 finishes and some World Cup points.I would highly recommend other squad members to do a similar long stay trip with a couple of big competitions in mind. A week or two of pre-competition training is not enough.

Some people might be interested to hear that Eoin is still running and won one of the 3 day "O" events and finished a very close 3rd in the M40, and I can tell you the Vets are very good in their own terrain!