I’m all for technical courses. But I don’t think a starting 500m that is basically guaranteed to end the race for some people makes sense. My suggestion would be to move the start and finish to the top of the hill to give more than 100m before entering the single-file, slippery, technical wooded area.
If the start/finish line has to stay where it is, it also seemed like there were potentially better lines through the wooded zone.
After running on this course today can confirm it was still a danger gauntlet for the first lap. After that pretty decent. Apologies to a certain Andrew Davies for almost mucking him into a bush but such is life in the half danger gauntlet.