Twilight 11: Caught in the Web

Report by the Cyborg

First of all, I would like to apologise to any residents of Aranda, particularly those on the southern side of Aranda, if they found themselves overwhelmed by insects in recent times. I believe that I single-handedly destroyed all of the spiders webs in the Aranda reserve which may have caused a sudden spike in the insect population.

The second race for 2011 had us back in bushland at Aranda reserve; and once more the TriHards were in attendance in the form of the Cap’n, Junior and myself. And the race was back to all seriousness now, with the organisers remembering the control cards.

Checkpoints one and two fell relatively easily, and I was helped through having a couple of other orienteers heading to the same checkpoints. I raced faster towards checkpoint three, using a small gully as a handrail, to get further out on my own (so as to stop the checkpoint being given away - help is nice, but I don’t learn much by following other racers!)

Checkpoint four proved a little more difficult - not so much due to having to cross a barbed-wire fence, but all the spiderwebs! This trend continued on through checkpoint five, and checkpoint six! I was trying to be a bit smart on checkpoint six, and followed a contour line around, rather running over it. In the end I don’t think this helped that much - I saw another racer who I’d seen at checkpoint five arrive shortly before me.

Checkpoint seven proved to be the challenge of the course, with a long run to it, right over the hill. I started out by trying to plan a straight-line course to it, but abandoned this concept shortly after reaching a fence; it would be much easier to just follow the paths, so that’s what I decided to do.

And it would have been heaps easier, if I hadn’t have ended up on the wrong road. I’m still not sure how it happened, but it turned out I was on a road almost parallel to the road I thought I was on, and a little further east. Fortunately, it didn’t take me too far out of my way, and put me right onto another handrail - the powerlines.

I followed them down, then cut through bush and onto a small goat track which ran right alongside checkpoint seven. When I arrived in the area, I started to hunt for it, it should have been just south-east of the track, near a junction. A lady turned up about the same time looking for the checkpoint. We both spent a bit of time bush-bashing, before we moved back closer to the path, and saw some other people punching their card. The combination of putting the checkpoint in a pit, and the long grass, made it very hard to spot!

We then headed out up the paths for checkpoint eight, where I broke from the paths and ran for checkpoint nine. Running back down, I overshot slightly on checkpoint 10 - spotting the path lady once more as I ran back up the hill. She was walking on paths, and reaching checkpoints before me! Checkpoint 11 was relatively easily spotted, and I ran to the finish in 63:31 which, as it turns out, was about six minutes slower than the Cap’n at 57:44... Again.

Lessons Learned

• Always use handrails!
• It’s almost always quicker and easier to just stay on a path.