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| Today's event-looking back the finish chute (to the right of the red and white tape) to the last control. |
The Sprints were held yesterday at St Patrick's college in Ballarat. Centreing around an oval they offered something I've never been a part of before-a map exchange! This meant that runners on six of the courses needed to run on to the oval, punch a control, throw their map into a bin, then pick up a new map for their course and continue back into the school buildings for another frolic.
The sprints always fast and fun, with many fast direction changes. This one certainly didn't disappoint. You had to keep your mind sharp the whole time. I forgot to turn mine on before I started and lost about 35 seconds on that first control by not knowing where north was. A bit of a pain, but I was really pleased that I then managed to keep my concentration until the third to last control when I got rattled by the fact that I didn't hear the beeps at the control, waited for four people to do their punches (their was only one punch)and then did my own again (only to find that it was just a very quiet one ), and proceeded to head for my last control instead of my second to last! Luckily I checked the number, saw that it wasn't right , and realised my mistake. Then I had to slog back across to the goal post control and then turn around again, all the time with Andrea from Tassie screaming in to the finish (and I knew she had started after me). We enjoyed a tough battle up the finish chute and a puffing laugh afterwards over it.
This is what my maps looked like.
The highlight was that Olivia won the W17-20E course .
Other results can be found at
Today was the long distance event.
It was very long and hard. By the time I stumbled down the finish chute 1 hr and 40 minutes after I started I was totally spent. Possibly more tired than I have ever been at the end of an event.
It was a hot day and this really took its toll. My legs didn't have much in them today either, so I was pretty happy to end up 19th of 26 runners.
Trev had a much better time of it -coming 4th in the M 45 AS class. By the time I arrived back he looked fresh as a daisy.
Other results for today can be found at
Whole map
My legs from 8-9 was my worst leg with 9-10 following closely. Both of these were tough navigationally after a physically tiring course, so the brain really wasn't working well.
I must have deviated a little more to the left and arrived at the thicket to the left of the one I was looking for and used it for an attack point. Bad idea when it is the wrong thicket! Needless to say I searched around in there for a while and finally relocated off of the deep erosion gullies to find it. I probably lost 6 or so minutes here.
I had limited time for taking photos today. Just a few of the early finishers that I happened to be able to snap. We had a finish chute coming down the side of the paddock which was being used for the assembly area and skirting along the bottom of it under a big screen.
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| Some of the SA contingent |
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