Several orienteering friends wanted to see the astro shots I took in the middle of the night while everyone else was sleeping, so I decided to do another post depicting “the other side of orienteering”, only this time, as well as including some of the scenery around our event, I will also include some action shots taken mostly last month, just in case you are tuning in for a different reason and would like to know what Orienteering looks like. I couldn’t take shots of competing this weekend, as our start times were all in a smaller cluster, so I was busy competing myself. I had more time at the event (Hobart O-Fest) in February.
I would have loved to have taken more scenery shots, but the weather didn’t cooperate. While I was shooting the astro, the clouds rolled in, and stayed for the rest of the weekend. Considering the fact that it was after 1 a.m. when I stopped, and that I was competing later that day, it was possibly not such a bad thing.
The remaining photos capture some of the action of Orienteering. The first race this long weekend was a sprint around Bicheno, sometimes amongst the rocks of the headland, interweaving that complexity with dashing around the buildings of the local primary school. It was exciting and intense, with people rushing urgently in all directions, concentrating on their maps. Amazingly, nobody accidentally crashed into anyone else. There were eight courses on offer, and hence the large number of directions being taken at the same time. It looked very busy; and it happens to be very stimulating to compete: you are in a tunnel of concentration the whole time, solving control finding with route choice problems whilst reading your map running as fast as you can.
The next day we went bush at Coles Bay, in a “Medium” length course, that most people found to be very long, as the hills were steep, the bush thick, obstacles plenty and the weather hot. Times were not slick, but the challenge was worth it. This day determined the official State Middle Distance Champions in the various age divisions.
The final day had us move further south, to open rocky terrain near Spiky Beach. The designation was “Long Course”, but my time was about half that of the day before, and I don’t think I was alone. The three different courses gave us lots of technical practice. Many of us are honing our skills to prepare for the Australian Three Day Championships at Easter, to be held near Adelaide. Tasmania does extremely well at the national level.
