ADHOC Orienteers

Coach John along with Edmund, Ruth & Jacob headed up to the Kenine Hill map near Beauforts this morning for some granite terrain training. It was a chilly start but stayed dry and the 4 completely different activities were good fun. The next events we’ll be doing are in Perth late August - Sprint and Middle state champs, entries are open in Eventor.

Today some of our members were competing in events. In Perth the interclub relays were on and since Jen, Jacob & Greg were already going to be up there Edmund travelled up too and we had 2 teams of 2 representing us - perhaps the first time we've taken part in the club relays? As usual the combination of head-to-head racing and lots of people took it's toll on a number of young teams and Jen & Greg triumphed over Edmund & Jacob. Admittedly the boys were moving quite a bit faster, but this is orienteering and the controls must be the correct ones! The hares will no doubt have a victory... but not for another 12 months.

In Kojonup the Run4Resilience was on, a farm laneway fun run over varying distances to support farmers mental health. Louisa ran the 21.1km in 1:43:11 and was the 2nd female, her daughter Maddie did an admirable job of handing out finishers medallions, and John ran the 10km course in 51:53. It was -1 degrees for part of the drive there, but a sunny and calm 3 degrees when the 10k started.

John

Day 5’s replacement event was a sprint next to the town of Morgins. After a lot of rain over night it was soggy underfoot but once again brilliantly sunny. This made for better running than previous days despite the change to 1:3000 (or 4000) scale and 2.5m contours to keep our brains busy.

Several shoes were sucked from feet and I shudder to think how muddy some of the orienteer trails were for late starters. Jen improved again today, 51st in her category, Ruth 30th, Edmund 61st, John 33rd. So many controls on so many things that just looked like ‘forest’ as you ran past them! And apparently Swiss rules apply to this event, not IOF rules, perhaps explaining how there could be other controls within your own control circle on previous days.

Sadly just the one event to go, up the gondolas from Chatel and then we all go our different ways.

Day 4 of the Swiss 6 done, another mostly yellow map with very steep slopes. Edmund in M16 has been on 1:15000 maps, Jen & Ruth on 1:10000 and John on 1:7500 (I’d prefer 10K but am getting used to the spacing of the contours now). Jen is improving as the week goes on and Ruth and Edmund are coping really well with the brand new terrain and relatively challenging navigation.

Tomorrow’s event has been cancelled as thunderstorms may not mix well with 3 cable car rides to the heights and we’re running a back-up forest sprint in Morgins.

Day 3 of Swiss 6 done and we’re receiving compliments about our club shirts. The orienteering was great today and we’re looking forward to a rest day tomorrow.
John

Swiss O Week Day Three! Such a beautiful area and fun (and steep) courses. We are all getting the hang of it now but wow these Europeans are strong- today we had to walk almost 2km up a mountain AFTER the finish, to catch the chairlift back down. Looking forward to a well earned rest day tomorrow.

Day 2 of the Swiss 6. Gondola and then chairlift to the assembly area at 1800m altitude. THEN a 2.5km walk with 200m climb (!!!) to our starts. Ruth & I started at the same start as M/W12 and M/W70. Basically a treeless map and broadly downhill, some sections bum-slidingly steep. My course had 370m of climb and 700m descent…

Ruth did amazingly well today, 23rd/30ish, Edmund much better 55th/70, John 37th/80 and the terrain was amazing, just physically brutal. Tomorrow we have a cross-border event - and more long walks to the start (and an 800m from the finish back to the chairlift).

Some cows came wandering through the spectator area and unfortunately for Edmund one of the beasties stepped on his compass which is now not much chop!

John

Today family Toomey-GT joined WA families Braid, Dufty, Brownlie and Coleman in the Swiss mountains for day 1 of the Swiss 6 days. We’re *all* staying in a classic Swiss (French) chalet and had a 20min shuttle bus and then 10min gondola ride up to the competition area.

Courses, wow, 10% climb so I had 400m climb in my 4km course that took me 100mins!! Ruth and I started 60s apart and I saw her twice on the course, and we finished 30s apart. The terrain was VERY steep and us ADHOCers were all at the very tail end of our categories.

5 more days… :-)

Fri May 1st 10am is our primary interschool teams this year and with a couple of new schools coming we should have over 200 students from about 8 schools once again racing around Centennial Park. Our first one of these was way back in 2016!

I am setting, but at this point it is only me on the day so if anyone can offer up 2 hours Friday morning to help set up and then (1) take timing chips from the students; (2) scan them into the computer that would be great.

John