Training Log Archive: StuartE

Australian champs long. Decently happy with this run apart from a few disaster controls. Started off cautiously as it was my first proper time orienteering in Australia. Still made a mistake to 3 getting dragged to the right slightly and wasting 30s on a parallel line of rocks. On the long leg to 8 I was a bit wobbly across the open as I changed my intended route twice between going around or over the hill. Got quite lost looking for the control on a rock by a clearing along a steep hill with no obvious contour detail spending 25 minutes on the leg. I am having real trouble telling the difference between open, scattered trees, and white forest in places across all the events. 19 was another disaster as I did circles around a camera man not wanting to get close, before realising he was 2m from it as he was filming it. The control site was a little tricky as it was a tiny reentrant on the top of a spur with larger reentrants either side. The rocks made it hard to read clearly and I kept bouncing between the two larger reentrants. Had another mistake on 20 messing around on the wrong rock on the edge of the circle. Overall enjoyed the race, and my fitness held up better than expected. Before 19 I thought I might have been on track to finish under 2 hours. The navigation went well except for the parts when it didn't, and I got to see 4 wallabies/kangaroos in the forest.

Course 1 - Splits

Oceania sprint at Charles Sturt university. The map had a mix of university campus and forested hill. I was slightly late to the start as they didn't allow much time from quarantine. Made a few mistakes on the traps in the campus area. The forested hill went poorly too as I pretty much forgot how to orienteer. I missed the run through for the spectator control as it looked like that route was out of bounds on the map. In the second section in the campus I had no mistakes but was more tired and running slower. Not great for my first run in Australia.

Course 1 - Splits

Mairangi loop.

To uni

From uni

Vic run group, slower than usual as we were merged with a slower group to start with. Ran around the cemetery in the dark and light rain which was fun.