ADHOC Orienteers

State Middle Distance Champs today on a nice technical section of the Yetar Spring map. Success for our 3 ADHOCers today with Ruth winning W14A and in front of the boys on that course too. John was fastest of the classes on Course 2 and won M35A, managing to finish a minute faster than sparring partner Tom who actually caught up 2minutes at #2!! We joined Edmund (same course, earlier start) at #3 and it was head to head for a while before I caught back up at #6 and was pretty clean from there to the end.

Thanks Graham & Ceri for interesting courses!

Saturday was the WA Sprint Distance Orienteering Championships at Belmont Community College and with the high-calibre setting team of Ricky & Craig the courses were great fun. Pancake-flat, buildings not aligned N-S and a map flip made for heaps of navigational entertainment!

Edmund and Ruth had great runs with Edmund also being fastest on course 2, coming in ahead of the winning W21A Amy, and visiting speedy Newcastle-based M45 Greg.

Ruth took her time to #1 but after that she got better and better and even had a few fastest splits compared to the W21 cohort. 3 State Champions for ADHOC, yay! On to the Middle for Sunday.

Coach John along with Edmund, Ruth & Jacob headed up to the Kenine Hill map near Beauforts this morning for some granite terrain training. It was a chilly start but stayed dry and the 4 completely different activities were good fun. The next events we’ll be doing are in Perth late August - Sprint and Middle state champs, entries are open in Eventor.

Today some of our members were competing in events. In Perth the interclub relays were on and since Jen, Jacob & Greg were already going to be up there Edmund travelled up too and we had 2 teams of 2 representing us - perhaps the first time we've taken part in the club relays? As usual the combination of head-to-head racing and lots of people took it's toll on a number of young teams and Jen & Greg triumphed over Edmund & Jacob. Admittedly the boys were moving quite a bit faster, but this is orienteering and the controls must be the correct ones! The hares will no doubt have a victory... but not for another 12 months.

In Kojonup the Run4Resilience was on, a farm laneway fun run over varying distances to support farmers mental health. Louisa ran the 21.1km in 1:43:11 and was the 2nd female, her daughter Maddie did an admirable job of handing out finishers medallions, and John ran the 10km course in 51:53. It was -1 degrees for part of the drive there, but a sunny and calm 3 degrees when the 10k started.

John

Day 5’s replacement event was a sprint next to the town of Morgins. After a lot of rain over night it was soggy underfoot but once again brilliantly sunny. This made for better running than previous days despite the change to 1:3000 (or 4000) scale and 2.5m contours to keep our brains busy.

Several shoes were sucked from feet and I shudder to think how muddy some of the orienteer trails were for late starters. Jen improved again today, 51st in her category, Ruth 30th, Edmund 61st, John 33rd. So many controls on so many things that just looked like ‘forest’ as you ran past them! And apparently Swiss rules apply to this event, not IOF rules, perhaps explaining how there could be other controls within your own control circle on previous days.

Sadly just the one event to go, up the gondolas from Chatel and then we all go our different ways.

Day 4 of the Swiss 6 done, another mostly yellow map with very steep slopes. Edmund in M16 has been on 1:15000 maps, Jen & Ruth on 1:10000 and John on 1:7500 (I’d prefer 10K but am getting used to the spacing of the contours now). Jen is improving as the week goes on and Ruth and Edmund are coping really well with the brand new terrain and relatively challenging navigation.

Tomorrow’s event has been cancelled as thunderstorms may not mix well with 3 cable car rides to the heights and we’re running a back-up forest sprint in Morgins.

Day 3 of Swiss 6 done and we’re receiving compliments about our club shirts. The orienteering was great today and we’re looking forward to a rest day tomorrow.
John