Orienteering 43:00 [3] 6.85 km (6:17 / km)
My first naki local after work event. Meant to be a sprint down by the coast. Ha. First mistake was believing that and wearing singlet and shorts. #1-2 went swimmingly (not literally, but), then #3. oh #3. On a hilltop amongst the open dunes. I cut off the track in what I thought was the right place (very hard to read the track on the map though, being light brown on top of light yellow). Immediately was swimming in head-high dune grass, with nice pathces of blackberry hidden underneath. Suffice to say, I did not hit the control Eventually breaststroked out to the beach and relocated, only to not find the control again. By this point Cairie had caught me up, so I took the globally used approach of 'follow the local'. Which did the trick.
We then had a series of what could have been sprint controls around the parks and streets. But it quickly became apparent that the 4.5km course length was done as straight lines, not best route.
Then I came unstuck again at #11, which was a vegetation boundary, in an area where there was much much more vegetation than on the map. So I went off contours and circle location. My second mistake ;) After some minutes of bashing around, the mum, young boy and dog that I passed a couple of controls previous came casually jogging down the water's edge before pausing, doing a 180 and trotting off... aaaaah, control found!
The rest of the course was back in single-contour beloved open dunes. Got full bodily stuck in lupin, before wandering around to find #13. #14 I thought I spiked, but it was 50m from where I spiked it. #15...well, i didn't take a compass, thinking it was a sprint. So I ended up well off in no-man's land in the long grass. And #16, I decided straight through blackberry was a fantastic idea :) I needed the mum, boy and dog to show me where it was again - tucked underneath the Te Rewa Rewa bridge!
Good day all up! 43mins on my first local a/w sprint!