Orienteering in South East Queensland

12:00 Thursday 30th August 2007
"Daisy Hill State Forest" 1:10,000 5m
UBD 222R11 20km SE of Brisbane CBD
"Long" 13 controls 4.9km 150m climb (3.1%)

A very sloppy performance. I was 5th of 23 in 52 minutes, 10 minutes behind SuYan. All the guns were on the ExtraLong course. 11mpk wasn't good; I've raced or trained 5 times in 8 days and maybe I've gone off a little!

1 was tough due to first-controlitis and the vagueness of the terrain going in.

I lost 4 minutes on 2 by going down the wrong gully system - my compass told me everything I needed to know and correction was fairly quick.

3 seemed to come up very fast - only 40 seconds.

4 also took far too long (2 minutes?) because I veered right through the green (which isn't very green - the Lantana dying off all over town, presumably because of drought.) Then I was pulled off course into a control hung for a different event near the circle.

10 I went round the road an others assure me that 6 contours climb through green, or contouring through the gullies, was faster.

The map seemed less than perfect in some details - 1 was odd, 2>3 is much shorter than mapped, coming out of 6 everyone found themselves on the track, 11 felt a bit odd.

Thanks and well done to Mat.

16:00 28th August 2007

4 youngsters and 4 not youngsters attended - ages ranged from early teens to mid 50s.

Clive first asked us to warm up round the oval and do the usual complicated stepping to and fro.

The theme was control flow, in particular what happens in the circle, following up on my training session two weeks ago. Clive has fabricated a bagful of fake SI sticks and plenty of fake SI boxes on stands so we could do it properly!

First we discussed control procedure, emphasising that any procedure is better than none.

The first exercise was "punching" a control in the middle of the oval using a random map with in and out bearings marked, then doing the same in reverse. After swapping maps a few times we were getting smoother, partly because Clive was sending us out at shorter and shorter intervals. He invited us to shout out our procedure as we ran, which I struggled with because I don't verbalise it.

Next was an interval run around the nearby tracks, led by an impossibly young and skinny person, about which no more.

Next up more practice of smooth control procedure. The boxes were scattered in pairs around the oval and nearby bush, and we each had a different random map with a marked course of 5 controls with legs at the right bearings, plus meaningful control descriptions and codes to tell us which one to clip. By the time we had swapped maps five times this was getting easier.

The finale was the usual hill sprints plus crunches. I had already piked by then 8^)

09:00 Sunday 26th August 2007
"Leyburn Hills" 2007 1:10,000 5m
Leyburn State Forest, 40km West of Warwick, 155km WSW of Brisbane CBD
"Red 7" 4.7km 150m climb (3.2%)

My time of 46:43 at 9.9mpk won this course and M45-54AS, so now I'm the Queensland Champion Burglar.

A long lonely climb to the start found the forest full of chattering happy folk.

Start > 1 1:34 [1:22] Along the track then careful in the diggings.

1>2 5:33 [3:59] Straight theh very careful into the circle.

2>3 9:48 [Win] This leg is a beauty, many runners on other courses had a similar leg and a lot of
people made a hash of it by mistaking the first saddle (track bends) for the second (track straight through), or vice versa. I considered going over the hill but it's 12 contours through unmapped terrain, so like almost everyone I contoured and climbed to the right. A climbing traverse is very unreliable because you never quite know where you are, especially on a broad vague spur like this one. At the top of the watercourse I spotted the saddle, decided I needed to confirm which one it was by checking the track, quickly confirmed and took off along the track, to take the lead which I held to the end. Others lost a lot of time by deciding it was the second saddle. One competitor reported running west to the track.

3>4 4:20 [Win] Many reported wasting time here but I bounced off the gully on the left, aimed off to the left and picked it up quickly.

4>5 3:21 [Win] Straight - the gullies were easy to read.

5>6 7:26 [6:03] I didn't want to grovel in the gully and went right and then took great care into the control; others went straight for better times.

6>7 7:11 [6:09] I approached a little high, spotting the rocks, and wasted some time looking in a bunch of small unmapped gullies before finding it in a big obvious gully.

7>8 2:52 [2:44] 2nd fastest - a more or less confident downhill leg.

8>9 3:21 [3:16] 2nd fastest again, same reason. I hammered down the spur, picked up the gully and ran straight onto it.

9> Finish 1:17 [0:32] The Finish is marked in the wrong place - about 2 or 3mm too far NW - and again was invisible from below. Taking off a on a compass bearing, I came upon a tape which took me some distance further north before I realised it was a dummy. Only the very slowest runner on this course took longer than me! The runner immediately behind me did exactly the same thing.

12:00 Saturday 25th August 2007
"Leyburn Diggings" 2007 1:10,000 5m
Leyburn State Forest, 40km W of Warwick, 155km WSW of Brisbane CBD
"Red 7" 8 controls 4km 80m (2% climb)

I burgled M45-54AS and won by a large margin in 40:05 (10mpk). I was 7th of 43 runners on the course, 5+ minutes behind the fastest; the field included W16, W21AS, W55, M65.

Start>1 7:40 A direct route would have been OK, picking up the gully to the south and then contouring, but first-leg-be-careful kicked in, so I took it easy, walked up the road and got a chance to look round the whole course, losing 67 seconds to the fastest split.

1>2 2:46 Straight - simple contouring which I went for aggressively, and I won this split.

2>3 10:14 [Fastest 6:32] Straight - great care into the gullies didn't help me, visibility was terrible, and I must have gone into the gully system to the SW; runing down the gully to relocate, I did so quickly at the clearing and reattacked successfully. I must have lost about 3 minutes. Maybe I should have looked for the clearing first time. Others also wasted time here.

3>4 7:37 [6:22] More or less straight, but was slow and careful through the green.

4>5 4:49 [4:05] Straight - I wasted a little time by avoiding the track near the control; the control is visible from the track, and the terrain is very nasty through the diggings.

5>6 1:26 Straight - I jointly won this split - my nav was confident, and I'm fast downhill. The trick was to navigate down the obvious spur, not the gully.

6>7 3:48 [3:24] Another confident downhill run. I kept in touch with the broad gully on the left.

7>8 1:23 [1:10] Aimed a little right.

8>Finish 0:22 [0:15] Careful into the finish because I'd heard complaints of difficulty finding it from below.

Perhaps I should have run M45A which was 6.2km / 145m and won in 59:19 (9.5mpk) - 2nd was 12mpk - had I been able to maintain something close to my K rate, I would have come second.

Thanks to Eric, BBB and RROC; SuYan, David, Lee and Ray for company. Thanks to Tim for pointing out that I am a wuss for running short.

12:00 Thursday 23rd August 2007
"Stockyard Creek" 2005 1:10,000 5m
UBD 223E16 18km SW of Brisbane CBD
"Long" 5.5km 195m climb (3.5%)

Number 4 was on the wrong creek junction - it ws the next one down - but this cost me no time.

My compass went crazy on the track between 6 and 7 just north of the minor gullies - I couldn't work out whether I was on the stretch of track running N-S or round the corner on the E-W section as the compass kept drifting left and right as I ran. Very odd. The uncertainty cost me a minute or so

I was 4th in a field of 11, 52:00 giving 9.5mpk although it felt faster, Mark N won in 36 minutes.

Thanks Ray and Brenton for their company, the Leungs for the course, the Simsons and OQ for the map.

09:00 Sunday 19th August 2007
"Bright View" 2005 1:15,000 5m
About 100km WSW of Brisbane CBD
"Red 4" 5.3km 135m climb (2.5%)

I took 42 minutes (7.9mpk) and came 5th in a field of 16 behind 4 burglars ;^)

This course was rather easy although I managed to get confused half way to 9 and waste a couple of minutes. 9 itself was hidden below ground level and invisible from the north; although approximately in the centre of the circle, it was marked at the foot of a watercourse when it was in fact at the head. That cost a couple more minutes.

1>2 down then up - left of the line.

12:00 Thursday 16th August 3007
"Bardon Forest Park" 2004 1:7,500 5m
UBD 158L6 5km West of Brisbane CBD
"Red Medium" 3.7km 145m (3.9%)

My time was 36 minutes, just under 10mpk. A win! Most of the guns were on the Long course...

Note the route choice marked in purple on 3>4.

The second map shows my son Daniel's very first orienteering event (excepting string courses.) Aged 6, Daniel has already shown some skill with maps. He ran the whole course flawlessly with minimal instruction on the first leg.

Thanks to the Spriggs for the event.

16:00 Tuesday 14th August 2007
Gap Creek Reserve

My first try at running a training session in Clive's absence. We had 5 takers, concentrating on control flow - avoiding lost time in the circle.

We started with a warmup round the oval, running and trying to plan routes on a random map as we ran. Rates of success differed significantly, although the sand-dune maps I handed out are rather challenging to read!

Next was a discussion about control flow, in the sense of doing in advance leg planning stuff like CARE (Control Attack point Route Exit - where Exit is from the previous control) so that you don't waste time coming out of a control.

I had streamered 23 control sites over 2km on Gap Creek Central in a zigzag course that challenged the CARE process. Participants found the relentless processing of legs and controls challenging.

Next was a discussion about control flow entering the circle, and I suggested that we should always check out the control descriptions twice. Once early on, maybe when planning the leg, so that we know that what we see in the circle is what we are looking for, and whether we need to approach from above or below. Then again entering the circle, to memorise the code, double check the control position and ensure a smooth clip.

I planted 18 full size controls with clippers over 2km on Gap Creek East on a similar zigzag course, but this time with many ambiguous control sites and some dubious control descriptions. I asked everyone to pay particular attention to descriptions and tell me which ones weren't quite right or which sites came as a surprise. This would have worked much better if I had handed out the right descriptions to everyone!

Update: on 5th Sept while putting out streamers I found the flag for no 11 which I had hung in an unmapped gully 50m NE. Oops.

09:00 Sunday 12th August 2007
"One Mile Creek" 1993 1:10,000 5m
UBD 107B6 20km NW of Brisbane CBD
"Red 3" 12 controls 4km 250m climb (6.25%)

A good run although very steep and rather green. Despite being 15 years old the map holds up well.

3>4 Straight up the first ridge, down the fat spur, along the path, contoured in.
8>9 Straight to the path then the only run of the day round the path to the control, wasted a little time looking for the stump instead of the gully junction which seemed higher than mapped.
9>10, 10>11, 11>12 all straight - the alternatives seemed worse.

I was 3rd in 59 minutes (14.8mpk) behind the winner in 57.

5,8,12 felt like vague control sites.

Thanks to Russell and Trevor for the event.

12:00 Thursday 9th August 2007
"Gap Creek East" 2007 1:10,000 5m
UBD 157H15 10km W of Brisbane cBD
"Red Long" 5.9km 235m climb (4%)

I helped Brenton to organise this event. We decided to offer Long / Medium / Short and got an equal number of takers on each course, which vindicated that choice. Times as usual were long - the courses were technically tough and physically pretty tough too - but Mark N stormed round the Long in a remarkable 54 minutes.

16:00 Tuesday 7th July 2007
Gap Creek

No map today sorry!

This is my first successful outing to Clive's regular training sessions on Tuesdays at Gap Creek. I did attend once before, along with three others, but Clive wasn't there!

We were ?6 participants, ?3 young bucks and ?3 not so young. Starting with a jog round the oval and some running-to-and-fro exercises, Clive then handed out some old maps and asked us to keep jogging but plan the first three legs such that we could describe how to run them from memory.

This requires major map simplification, which was the theme for the day.

Walking out onto Gap Creek Central, Clive handed out maps, asked us to memorise the first three legs, then when ready run them from memory. Difficult at first, this got much easier with practice. I tripped up on one leg, finding a major vehicle track I hadn't anticipated. I have a blindness to tracks which cross my path - they are rarely useful for navigation.

We finished with hill sprints, situps and stepups.

09:00 Sunday 5th August 2007
"Flagstone West" 2005 1:10,000 5m
UBD 301D17 40km south of Brisbane CBD
"Red 4" 12 controls 6.5km 210m climb (3.2%)

Another win! The courses were longer than I fancied so I ran Red 4 (6.5km) instead of Red 3 (7.3km), nominally competing in M21AS instead of M45A. I had a technically good run and finished in 61 minutes (9.3mpk) to win M21AS in a field of 4, 4th out of the 10 people on that course.

>1 high and right
1>2 Up the spur, aloing the track, contoured from half way, worked very well
2>3 Right of the hill
7 Relocated at the wiggly gully and compassed in very carefully
12 Tough to find because the paths weren't there but I had anticipated that and lost only a little time.

12:00 Thursday 2nd August 2007
"Samford Forest" 2004 1:10,000 5m
UBD 117F17 13km NW of Brisbane CBD
"Long" 4.35km 215m climb (4.9%)

The event centre was off the map - 200m East of the start triangle.

I had a very accurate run and seemed to handle the hills better than I have in the past. Last week's huge run on more or less similar terrain may have helped my confidence.

6 was a bit of a bingo - a subtle feature in thick green understory - but I ran straight onto it.
6>7 I went South / left down the main gully past the first significant gully climbing the hill, the did a climbing traverse to the main spur. The gullies to the west of the spur were easy to recognise for a reliable relocation.

I was 4th of 16 in 57 minutes; Mark N stormed it in 40. I beat a few folk who often get past me 8^)

Thanks to the Neumanns for a good course.