David Currie

704Happy New Year! We’re over with Christine’s family at the moment and today took the opportunity of some more local orienteering by attending NGOC’s score event at Parkend. When Christine, her Dad and I set off from home I still wasn’t quite sure whether I was going to run as my cough/cold is still lingering but, as we drove through the frost covered forest, I decided that it was simply too cold not to (the car thermometer was showing -2°C)!

The format was simple enough: a mass start with 30 controls with 5 of them worth double points. As an added bonus each control had a card attached which was worth a bonus prize (maximum one per competitor). You could also have a map without tracks if you enjoy wading through brambles. There was a good turnout and the punching start was a bit of a mass scramble.

I picked up my prize card at my second control so could then relax in to a slightly more sedate pace. I probably made a couple of route choice errors and wasted a bit of time at the control that was “just off the map” (all of the controls had suitably vague and amusing descriptions). I had to pick up the pace a bit in the last ten minutes and at the end decided to return a minute and a half early rather than getting the control near the finish and potentially being late back. I won’t have done spectacularly well but it was a respectable score (22 controls including all the double pointers), I came away with a large Toblerone and, most importantly, had fun (although did collapse in to a couging fit at the finish). All in all, a good start to the 2009 orienteering year.

Parkend Walk Score GPX

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Family, Orienteering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.