Event report: Navdash2

Mardalup Park, Claisebrook

At first sight Claisebrook Cove seems too simple for a good sprint event, with almost none of the arrays of small built structures, nooks, alleys and dead ends found elsewhere. Consequently, the courses had many fast-running, left/right route choice legs but several sections of the map did offer multi-choice legs (up to four feasible routes) and, with the stress of racing, the courses were still complex enough for some people to make significant errors.

One highlight of the day was the weather – only the second truly autumnal day of the year. Perhaps that was one reason for the good attendance (about 95), another being the “Learn to Orienteer” course that began the previous day. The newcomers all seemed to enjoy the experience and appreciated the assistance of the event officials.

On the Long course Ollie Martin was the only runner to get into the 12–15 minute intended winner’s time band and Anthea Feaver had a similar honour on the Short course. Everyone on the Easy course finished in good time, with newcomer Liam Shirren getting around in just over 12 minutes. The full results list is available on Eventor.

As always, a band of LOST members made the event run smoothly. Ian Fletcher planned the courses and was greatly assisted by Phil Taylor who vetted the control sites and shared the control placement and cross-check on the morning. Rosemary Kullmann organised the arena with help from Peter Gillon and others, Anthea Feaver, Mike Howe, Jan Fletcher and Kate Klyukina assisted newcomers, and Mike, Rosemary, Helen, Liisa, Anthea, Robert and Phil collected the controls in such good time that the course setter was on the way to The Shed before noon.

Apparently there were several people who crossed out-of-bounds areas. Even though this was probably due to insufficient attention to map detail it is completely unacceptable. We need to be extremely careful about this because it risks having orienteering banned by land managers. In competition events it would result in disqualification.

Results are in Eventor.
Upload your track to Livelox and compare your route choices with those of your fellow orienteers.

Photo: Starting at Claisebook, by Sue Dowling.