I spent the NZ Queen's Birthday long weekend touring with the Australian Bushrangers Orienteering team in a set of Test Match races against the NZ national team.
Friday's race was in and around the Auckland zoo. I ran well (especially in the complex zoo terrain) and finished 7th (out of 30) despite a small mistake at the third last control.
Saturday morning was a middle distance race in steep, muddy, farmland. A good solid run, without expending too much energy for the upcoming test matches, I finished first of the bushrangers, about 5mins down on the winner.
The first test was the Massey University sprint. Many controls were above or below uncrossable walls and the challenge was to approach these from the correct side. Speed was crucial, and although I finished only 90 seconds behind the winner, I was several places down.
Sunday morning was a World Ranking middle distance race. This was my best run of the weekend. I ran 28 minutes for about 4km in complex, tough sand dunes, only 15 seconds behind Eric Morris and 1 minute behind Rob Preston (the top Aussie).
The afternoon was a chasing start, and I caught Eric by the first control. Before long a pack of about 8 runners were together, fighting hard for 3rd place. I almost fell off, but just managed to hang on and catch the pack again in the low visibility young pines, and stay with the pack until the end for a good finish.
Monday was the long distance World Ranking Event. Visibility was very low, and the contours were extremely steep. I thought the contour interval was almost 10m! I ran ok for the most part, but got totally confused by one control and made a parallel error in the most complex part of the map, losing around 8 minutes. My result therefore was disappointing, but I learnt a lot and can take away a few useful lessons about orienteering in low visibility terrain.
Full Results at
http://www.geocities.com/nwocnz/Results.html
