SS#1 @ Bunjil Spirit

The first State Series Bush Orienteering event was held today, out near Mt Egerton. They've changed all the course allocations around this year, so even though I've gone up (down?) a grade to W40A, I was doing course 2! Only 11 controls, but spaced well apart.

I started well, trotting through the forest easily, until I really stuffed it up at control #6. To get to it meant going down and up a massive gully, so I decided to go around. Well, in hindsight, I didn't go "around" enough, and even though the road and the second gully appeared where they should, I was far too far north of where I should have been. I wasn't "lost", I knew all I had to do was follow the gully south, but man it was a long way!

I did the next control easily enough (by going down and up, following the red line), but screwed up again at control #8. I was heading (so I thought) towards a dirt road, but it never appeared. After blundering around for a while and following a gully (which, in hindsight, was actually another gully), I found a dirt road, but didn't know which one it was or how far along I was. As I wandered slowly trying to relocate, one of the M75s appeared and asked me if I needed help. Yes please! But he thought we were on an east-west track, when the compass clearly said north-south. But his error helped me narrow down mine, so I turned around and trotted off down the road towards the correct gully, and found the control easily.

By this stage I was buggered, and my legs had run out of steam. Plotted and gasped my way around the rest of the course without incident, to finally stagger home.

Course: 2 (which is really a 4)
Course length: 6.8 km
Distance taken: 9.7 km
Time taken: 2:01
Time lost in mis-navigation: ~30 minutes

The first part of the course was nice and runnable like this:


with steep erosion gullies like this:


and killer hills like this:

Just in case you thought this was all a walk in the park.

Weekly wrap

Weight	71.5 kg
Walk	11.4 kms
Run	25.6 kms
Cycle	0 kms