The 4th and last
event of the Sn@p Sprint Series 2017 was at Blackwood - Karinya (on a standard
ISSOM orienteering map) and set by the young Southern Arrows runners Angus and
Nick, with just some advice from Stefano.
The courses were really
challenging and there were a lot of uncrossable fences so the runners really
had to pay a lot of attention with constant map reading from the start to the
finish.
Thanks you all for sending
me your GPS tracks :)
Let's start with leg 1-2, of
the Hard course. As you can see the first half of the course was in the forest
reserve while the second part was inside the school; we had to switch between
two different orienteering techniques: fastest way (in the forest) and shortest
way (in the school).
The white forest was not so
runnable so definitely the route on the grass was faster.
Interesting the route choice
on the track (Joanna): safe and fast as we are still at the beginning of the
race, but a bit too long.
We already have lots of
uncrossable fences, watch out!
Control number 4: mistakes
for John, Stefano, Abigail and even Simon. The straight choice was good but
apparently we had no safe catching feature; Joanna and Ben are teaching us how
to deal with these kind of controls here.
Small mistake for Abigail
(maybe she's reading ahead about the tricky leg 7-8) and different route for
the Cazzolatos.
This leg... oh-oh!
We have John crossing the
fence (= DSQ) running north into the green valley.
Joanna decided to join the
green valley too, trying to catch the small track that apparently wasn't there
on the terrain.
Ben realized too late that
there was a comfy and maybe too easy track along the railway so he went
straight in the deep valley and somehow came out alive.
Abigail: I think right now
she is still trying to figure out which should be the best route choice to take
but she didn't cross any fence, well done!
Good job Toby :)
Maybe Abigail was still
reading how to reach control number 8 while Alyce went for a quick visit to the
valley, also to show us that actually there was another route choice for this
leg.
The spectator control also
had a route choice and Simon was the fastest even if he took the longest one
(about 20 meters). Good pace for Joanna and no-one crossed the fence here,
good.
Let's go inside Blackwood
High School. Both the route choices were good and maybe the one inside the
school was even better and a bit shorter.
John here it looks like you
are DSQ or it's just a gps/satellites mistake? Mmmmmmmmm...
And more problems here –
again good job by the course planners.
Mistakes made by Abigail,
Toby, a small one by Ben who nearly got trapped in the fenced area.
Impressive leg from Joanna.
Abigail was still thinking
about leg 7-8 so her choice looks reasonable.
Here there was just one
route choice but the area was really tricky with a lot of purple lines and
controls all around.
At the end of the course we
have a couple of easy legs but remember that you should run fast till the end,
especially if the final bit is not tricky so basically you're not risking
anything.
Results for the event and
the overall series score are on the Results page.
See you at Trinity College
next Sunday for the SA Sprint Champs!!
We hope you've had fun and
that it was a nice exercise/warmup for the next weekend.
Stefano, Angus & Nick
