Training Log Archive: jennycasIn the 1 days ending Apr 19, 2017:
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Wednesday Apr 19, 2017 #
9 AM
orienteering race (Middle Earth mid-long) 1:23:38 [4] 7.2 km (11:37 / km) +95m 10:54 / km
shoes: Inov8 ORoc 280
Whakarewarewa redwoods forest on the outskirts of Rotorua, with the amazing assembly area under the trees - some of them 70m high and planted in 1901 - being less than 2km from the house we were staying in. It truly felt like an international event with all of the European orienteers present (plus the map/terrain reminded me somewhat of UBC in Vancouver) and the catering was excellent - I went back for a 2nd sausage which I never do unless at the end of a rogaine, and then bought a piece of rhubarb & custard pizza/pie!
I'd entered 21s for this because all the races I've done lately have been rather shorter than the WMOC W40 final will be, and my main goal was to keep pushing hard even when I got tired. Secondary goal, given that I was starting 12 min before Bridget, was to finish before she did, and I managed this, despite numerous small faffings-around when looking for controls (such as a pit lovingly hand-dug by the organisers a couple of days beforehand) hidden among the tree ferns. But I think everyone had numerous small faffings-around and at least I didn't need to have more than 2 goes at finding any one control or lose more than a couple of minutes on any of them (but I probably lost 6-7 min all up).
The course was in a number of sections:
a) the 'high country' where we started up on the escarpment, with steep gullies, and such low visibility that I couldn't actually read the map in the dark forest and did the first few controls on guesswork, trying to figure out the 2.5m contours;
b) transport leg down the escarpment to the totally flat stuff at the bottom (whee for running slalom down MTB track);
c) a couple of controls in totally flat, fairly open area, one of which I ended up too far right on and the other of which was on Gandalf (I took Geoff back to photograph him later on);
d) flat swampy grid of plantation forest across the road, with wading options - by the time this was over my legs were a bit weary;
e) back into the tree-ferny stuff but this time there were subtle gullies and pits/depressions which many people had great difficulty in finding. Often it was a matter of deciding which would be the best route to provide a decent attack point: squiggly mountain bike track vs direct fern-crashing. I decided to take the tracks and run hard, which mostly paid off, and I got in 2 min before Bridget did, so she only beat me by 10 :)
In this redwoods forest is a treetop walkway incorporating something like 18 suspension bridges between tree platforms, and which was high above us while we were orienteering. Initially I scoffed at paying $25 for this but when we went back the next evening to look at the lanterns suspended from the trees, I was so enchanted by the scene that I decided to do the treetop walk by nightlight, which was absolutely magical, if a little chilly.
I'd entered 21s for this because all the races I've done lately have been rather shorter than the WMOC W40 final will be, and my main goal was to keep pushing hard even when I got tired. Secondary goal, given that I was starting 12 min before Bridget, was to finish before she did, and I managed this, despite numerous small faffings-around when looking for controls (such as a pit lovingly hand-dug by the organisers a couple of days beforehand) hidden among the tree ferns. But I think everyone had numerous small faffings-around and at least I didn't need to have more than 2 goes at finding any one control or lose more than a couple of minutes on any of them (but I probably lost 6-7 min all up).
The course was in a number of sections:
a) the 'high country' where we started up on the escarpment, with steep gullies, and such low visibility that I couldn't actually read the map in the dark forest and did the first few controls on guesswork, trying to figure out the 2.5m contours;
b) transport leg down the escarpment to the totally flat stuff at the bottom (whee for running slalom down MTB track);
c) a couple of controls in totally flat, fairly open area, one of which I ended up too far right on and the other of which was on Gandalf (I took Geoff back to photograph him later on);
d) flat swampy grid of plantation forest across the road, with wading options - by the time this was over my legs were a bit weary;
e) back into the tree-ferny stuff but this time there were subtle gullies and pits/depressions which many people had great difficulty in finding. Often it was a matter of deciding which would be the best route to provide a decent attack point: squiggly mountain bike track vs direct fern-crashing. I decided to take the tracks and run hard, which mostly paid off, and I got in 2 min before Bridget did, so she only beat me by 10 :)
In this redwoods forest is a treetop walkway incorporating something like 18 suspension bridges between tree platforms, and which was high above us while we were orienteering. Initially I scoffed at paying $25 for this but when we went back the next evening to look at the lanterns suspended from the trees, I was so enchanted by the scene that I decided to do the treetop walk by nightlight, which was absolutely magical, if a little chilly.