south african orienteering champs in sabie

This year my goal for the SA orienteering champs, was to enjoy the courses (as always), and to not make any huge mistakes (like last year). My fitness isn't great, because I haven't been motivated to train as often as I should, so I wasn't expecting any great improvements.

So given my goals, and my fitness, I think I had a fairly good set of races. The terrain was very rough under foot, and I felt very tired and slow on most of the days. I'm very happy with my navigation, I'm getting quite accurate these days, only small errors around the control locations, with the occasional bigger mistakes when I'm getting tired.

Overall the champs had good courses, excellent organising, but the rough terrain sort of spoilt it for me. I guess I was hopeing for nice open runnable forests, but got this in stead...





Below is the map from the model event. I was in such a hurry that I forgot to take my compass with me when I went out, not that I ever use one, but on this day it would have been useful, because the fog moved in at the second control, and for the first time ever I literally ran a circle around a control.



I had a clean run on the middle distance, except for running too high going to no 11, and punching the wrong control for no 9, which got me disqualified. A little disappointing, but not too serious. It was a very hot day, and I suffered badly in the heat.



Again a nice and clean run in the long distance event. Battled to find the controls between the rocks and builders, always seemed to be on the wrong side, and then I wasted a lot of time going too low for no 10 due to another control in the area, and I got no 13 completely wrong, trying to rely on the vegetation in stead of the contours.



Almost no mistakes in the relay. I was a little hesitant and unsure of no 11, and then I jumped right over no 13 without seeing it, wasting a little time hunting around the rocks before I found it.



I managed to do a little over 30km of orienteering in this week. It's the most I've ever done in a week, and double the distance I've been running per week for training these last few months. I wish I could do this more often...