Autumn Series - North Sydney

Well the Summer has ended and the Autumn Series has begun. It was a beautiful evening at North Sydney's St Leonard's Park and while the start time was scheduled at 18:00 the organisers held us back till 18:15 to make sure that it was dark. The course wound it's was around Neutral Bay, down to the harbour and back up the hill. After the debacle of last week, I was extra keen to redeem myself. It was a little disappointing that the description sheet was in 6point font and was impossible to read on the run, so a great deal of starting and stopping was occurring. I had a couple of minor navigation hesitations, but in the end I was less than a minute late and managed to clock up 360 points. A much better result.

Happy trials.

Summer Series - Hunters Hill (Series Final)

Well, this was it the last "Summer Series" event for the season. Now was the time to leave it all out on the streets and go hard. The starting point was at St Joesph's sporting oval. After carefully studying the map, I made a cracking start and feeling strong and picking up a good bag of points, but a couple of minor navigation mistakes saw my time slip away. Then it all fell apart! Noticing that I only had 3 minutes to get back to teh finish, I was confident that I could do the 600mtrs in about 5 minutes (uphill) and only lose about 2-3mins, but I took a wrong street and actually started headign off inthe wrong direction. By the time I realised my mistake it was too late and it cost me about 9mins. Bugger, to say the least. The error cost me 120 points! So instead of the 390 collected I ended up scoring 260. Not happy Jan!

Bring on the "Autumn Series" which starts next week.

A quiet weekend

Well, after the last couple of weeks, it was a quiet weekend. Nothing productive was accomplished, but plenty of coffee was drunk and reading the weekend papers, I even managed to sleep in. Hmm .. so that's what it feels like. :-)

 

I might just have to try this again next week, maybe?

Summer Series - East Ryde (Great North Walk)

14th March, Great North Walk, Magdala Park, Magdala Road, East Ryde

It was the second last event for the current series and another perfect evening. On the initial look at the map, it appeared to be a pretty open course with lots of running to be had, and it was. The only thing that I underestimated was the hills. Not all the controls were obvious so your navigation had to be spot on. By the end of the evening I had accumilated 380 points, but had to take a 50 point penalty. Not unhappy with my efforts.

Kayaking

It was a perfect day for kayaking and whatever else you would want to do outside. After months of procrastination and an opportunity of a sudden opening in my “adventure” calendar, I decided to take a course in sea kayaking with Sydney Harbour Kayaks. It was a lot of fun and it really helped my technique, I’m looking forward to getting out again.

Summer Series - Meadowbank

Like the Putney course a couple of weeks ago, the Meadowbank course offered a lot of running and enough hills to keep you honest. I was generally happy with the course I wanted to follow, but a lack of attention to the environment and orientation of my map on controls 19 & 7 cost me too much time. Again it was a learning experience.

lessons learnt this week:

1. Start to pay more attention to the value of the controls. The distance between controls is becoming less of an issue now, but I have to become more selective in getting the higher valued controls.

2. Keep my eyes open!. Pay better attention to the terrain and features.

Only two more events left in the current Sumemr Series.

Happy trails.

Summer Series - Lane Cove

28th February, Pottery Green, Phoenix and Little Streets, Lane Cove

Hills and more hills yesterday at Lane Cove, it wasn't my best effort this week, I got hung up in the bush and wasted effort and more importantly time, not taking the best route trying to get out. I had to abandon a couple of controls to minimise my penalties. Only 240 points this week, but was pacing myself nicely with the running. I'm already starting to think about the 07/08 series.