Easter 3-Day Orienteering Carnival

Event centre at the Harcourt Recreation Reserve, where I camped for 3 nights on the footy oval, and made use of the facilities (communal showers, kitchen). The events themselves were held south of Castlemaine - one near Newstead, and two out past Campbells Creek.

Day 1: Mia Mia

First glance at the map, and relief that it looked "easy" - straightforward with clear features and no technical crap. Scale was 1:15000 and only white and green patches on the map.

10:22 start, clear and sunny, but turned overcast with drizzle patches during my run. Good run - I pretty much landed on every control, or knew exactly where I was if I didn't (if it's not *this* cliff, then it must be *that* cliff). Open running country, and I trotted for a good portion of it.

Course: 10: W35A
Course distance: 6.6 km
Actual distance: 7.9 km
Time taken: 1:25

Day 2: Spring Gully Diggings

Huge map (1:10000) with lots of colours - orange open stuff, green inpenetrable stuff, white semi-open stuff, and lots of technical gold-mining detail. A good map though, and the controls were where they were meant to be.

Late start 12:52 - had "lunch" before heading out (a very sad vege burger from the caterers), and hot on the course. Stuffed up control #3, eventually found myself at #11, relocated, and hit the rest pretty much spot on. Stopped running (too easy to screw up) and walked the rest of the course.

Course: 10: W35A
Course distance: 5.4 km
Actual distance: 7.4 km
Time taken: 1:38

Day 3: Deadman's Flat

Same location as yesterday, although running the southern section. Map was 1:10000 again but with 2.5m contours - which meant for a *very* detailed little map. We needed the extra detail though - this was the most technical course of the three.

I was listed as starting at 9:20, but my name wasn't on the start list. WTF? Eventually found my name against an 11:10 start, so walked all the way back to the spectator area (over a km back up the road), to hang around for another couple of hours. Dammit - I needn't have got up so early!

Good run - took it carefully and hit everything accurately.

Course: 10: W35A
Course distance: 4.5 km
Actual distance: 5.5 km
Time taken: 1:13


Day 2 (yellow) and day 3 (blue) courses. Where they come together is the Finish for both days - the starts are at the other end. Squiggly bits are where I went looking for a control.