Orienteering in South East Queensland

12:00 Saturday 28th July 2007
Torre Schools Rogaining Championships
172:23 14.8km (11.6mpk) 480m climb (3.2%)
26 of 36 controls 1580 of 2000 points

A win! We were 10th overall in a field of 51 teams, 4th mixed team, first mixed vets. I was the 12th placed male and 3rd placed male vet, Jacquie the 7th placed female and 1st placed female vet - although she is a supervet.

Pink marks 100 and 80-pointers; blue is 60-pointers. We got all the 100s, all but one of the 80s, half of the 60s, and most of the 40s and 20s we got were towards the end when we realised we had plenty of time left. 36 controls represent 2000 points and we were given 3 hours to get as many as we could.

The orange lines represent my selected "good legs" - neighbouring controls with limited height difference: climb is my limiting resource in a hilly rogaine. The pink line was the plan we made before starting, with the intention to go clockwise; ignoring the low-pointers and going straight to the high-pointers on the hill to the south, and taking in the worst climb early. We disregarded the controls on the two tall ridges in the middle as being too hard to incorporate into a good loop that took in the far controls. The second half of the loop was planned to give plenty of opportunities to add or subtract controls as time allowed.

The blue/black line is what we did, with only two diversions from the original plan, added loops at the northern end, both OK but not as climb-efficient as the master plan had been.

The plan worked very well and we completed the hardest work 46 - 103 - 85 - 102 - 66 - 87 - 101 - 86 - 43 in 61 minutes. 85 was in the wrong place on a small unmapped knoll to the east, inside the circle, but it cost us no time. I started thinking about how to maximise points after mopping up the four easy controls below the ridge at the NW.

85>102 contoured
66>87 contoured to the gully head then up and round to the north
87>101 straight
101>86 straight

Reaching 20 at 94 minutes I knew I was going to fade soon, and the remaining controls were largely dross, although with less climb. The first diversion from plan was to take in [20] - 82 - 63 - 81, and 82 was also our first loss of a minute or two. It proved difficult to find; the control was tucked away at a random spot in the gully, it was invisible from above and we missed it at first. The contouring was rugged and difficult to traverse, we were indecisive and slow (just as well, as that was how we found it) and despite minimal climb, 82 was our longest split at 9:08 - longer than I recollect.

At 81 we had used 114 minutes. The original plan next said [81] - 80, but again we had plenty of time left, so we added another loop and climbed two index contours (50m) out of 81 in our 2nd longest split (8:26) to get [81] - 21 - 60 - 80. I was tiring and slowing and had to rest once or twice up the climb out of 81.

80 was in the wrong place - about 150m west; we lost little time because the mob called us into it, while others lost heaps of time there, some finding the tape which was also in the wrong place! I was reasonably sure it was wrong but not willing to invest time to confirm that and took the next leg to 40 conservatively, aiming off slightly right and then traversing fully 4 gullies to find the right gully. Others went from 80 to 60 and for the same reason went up the wrong gully - the one to the SW - a very expensive mistake.

Back to the plan, and we reached 45 quickly but I was losing interest and needed some encouragement from Jacquie about what to do next - we were only 500m from home at that point.

[45] – 22 – 62 – 23 – Home was easy but I just wanted to have a lie down. Knowing that we had several minutes in hand I made no attempt to hurry the last couple of legs – just the way I like it. We finished 7 minutes early. Could we have used that time? Yes – 42 was a gimme between 82 and 63. However I’m very conservative in rogaines.

All numbers accumulative:

Control – Minutes - % – controls - % - mins/leg – points - % - points/min

43 – 61 (34%) - 9 (25%) - 6.8 - 680 (34%) - 11.1

20 – 94 (52%) - 14(39%) - 6.7 - 960 (48%) - 10.2

81 – 114 (63%) - 17 (47%) - 6.7 - 1180 (59%) - 10.3

80 - 135 (75%) - 20 (56%) - 6.8 - 1340 (67%) - 9.9

45 – 151 (84%) – 23 (64%) – 6.6 – 1460 (73%) – 9.7

Finish - 172 (96%) – 26 (72%) – 6.6 – 1580 (79%) – 9.2

The gradual reduction in performance as measured by points per minute could be attributed to me slowing but I think that’s not true until the very last few. It's because we started with the distant high-pointers.

The minutes per leg measure is remarkably consistent throughout. The earlier legs were generally harder work, so I guess my work rate just managed to match the work to be done.

Several controls were vaguely located, certainly not where they would be placed in an orienteering event - 83, 61, 82, 21, 47, 23 - although most cost us no time as they were in the centre of the circle. Note also that leg lengths are very consistent around 500m with no clusters, and where controls were closer horizontally, they were usually vertically distant.

We ran very little, even on the flat at the end when I had no oomph left at all. Instead I forced a fast walking pace up hill and on the flat and ran where possible downhill. Faster than Jacquie was comfortable with, explaining that she did this for fun and it wasn't much fun!

Thanks to QRA for the event and Jacquie for the company and encouragement.

Well done Mat and Duncan - home 35 minutes early with all controls.

Leaving 6 I imagined I was leaving 3 on the way to 7. I relocated at the depression next to the track on the ridge a little SW of 3 and lost relatively time but realising I had bitten off more than I could chew before picking up my boy from school I had to DNF.


Thanks Jim.

09:00 Sunday 22nd July 2007
"Mount Crosby" 2005 1:10,000 5m
UBD 174F16 23km West of Brisbane CBD
"Red 3" 14 control 3.8km 165m climb (4.3%)

I was feeling a bit sluggish so I skipped Red 2 on a map which I usually DNF and actually enjoyed Red 3. Tim set a nice course with lots of controls in order to minimise climb, I took ?43 minutes whoich is a respectable 11.3mpk. No time lost - a good run.

1>2 Straight

8>9 Down the gully almost to 4 before sidling up and over the ridge. Expected to see the green at 10 and use that to find 9 but instead spotted the control up the hill.

10>11 A little headless and unsure through the patches of green - suddenly visibility was low(er) and the flat terrain gave me few clues, and easy leg marred slightly by uncertainty, it seemed to take a long time.

Thanks Tim for the event.

12:00 Thursday 12th February 2007
"Gap Creek Central" 1:10,000 5m
UBD 157E9 11km West of Brisbane CBD
Long 18 controls 4.6km 210m (4.6%)
Short 8 controls 2.1km 90m (4.3%)

This was my event. There was a relatively low turnout with few of the usual suspects because of major events interstate. I used the northern half of the map, starting for the first time (?) from the top of the hill. This led to 4+% climb on each course, and the terrain is slippery, greenish and fairly technical, so very long times were recorded, and the best K rate of the day was 17.3mpk.

I offered a medium length course because the Long was a bit brutal, but there was only one taker.

Heartfelt thanks to Stephen, Sue and Walter for helping with control collection. Stephen mislaid his brain however so I had to go out and get the last (and most distant) few.

12:00 Thursday 5th July 2007
"Mount Coot-tha" 2005 1:10,000 5m
UBD 157P11 8km West of Brisbane CBD
"Long" 3.8km 190m climb (5%)

This was my event. I decided to do something different (I usually do) and use the steep northern part of the map. I realised that to keep climb no greater than 5% I couldn't do a traditional round-in-a-circle course crossing spur after spur. I also like to make my courses as technically difficult as possible so optimally every control would be attached from below. I also wanted to keep them guessing on the first leg. The solution was to run them 1.5km (2km via track) from the high point to the low point of this area and bring them back up contour by contour.

Mwahahahaha!

Winning times were 50 on the long (12.5mpk) and 35 on the short (17.5mpk) and while relatively few DNFed, the tail of long times was VERY long. The medians were 80 and 71 minutes.