Six Minutes of Separation (Part 2)

Grass Seeds and Prickles and Spiders, “Oh My!”

Report by the Cap’n

The relationships I developed during the second Runners Shop Twilight orienteering event of 2011 weren’t quite as easily overcome as the water at the ANU. The first of these relationships was involuntarily brought home as I endeavoured to find an out of the way tree with which to discuss the merits of surface vs underground watering ... Crossing an overgrown fence line I can away covered in grass seeds millions of the darn things, and I hadn’t even started yet! And so it was, already grumbling somewhat, that I began my walk to the start on what was a quite warm and humid afternoon. Having explained how to check, clear and then start with a timing stick to a couple of newcomers I then did the same and headed of in the direction of checkpoint 1.

Now I’m not particularly good at translating distance from a map into distance on the ground and so I learnt early on in this series that it always pays to have a marker of some sort that tells you when you’ve gone too far. In this case it was a track running perpendicular to my bearing which I hit in no time at all without any sign of the first checkpoint, bugger! However, knowing pretty much where I was had me backtracking quite quickly to the aforementioned checkpoint and moving on. Checkpoint 2 offered much the same problem with me hitting the gully in which the checkpoint was to reside a good 50 metres or so too far down. Kicking myself for not paying enough attention to my bearing while running, I took a bit more time and picked a couple more landmarks on my way to checkpoint 3 and so ended up within easy sight of it.

Crossing a barbwire fence over which someone had kindly laid a piece of carpet, I made my way toward some marshy land which was to be home to checkpoint 4, devouring several spider webs as I went, actually, several doesn’t cover it, the bloody things were every where, and many of them occupied by their owner builders as I realised to late and blundered through them I am reassured by the knowledge that I wasn’t the only person in the vicinity doing some weird dance and beating themselves with their hat in an attempt to rid themselves of both spiders and their webs...

Checkpoint 5 was very close by and 6 easily marked by a ring of rocky ground and then cam checkpoint 7. This was a long one, quite a long one and this is where if you get your bearing’s or your map reading even just a tiny bit out you end up lost ... I endeavoured to try and run from landmark to land mark, first picking up a fence corner and then some storm water pipes, only problem was they weren’t where I thought they were supposed to be. As it turned out there were a few of these scattered around and I’d veered off course already and come across a different one. At least I now new exactly where I was and so started again. A fellow competitor seemed to be following a similar methodology to myself and we sort of zigzagged and leapfrogged each other as we went. There was a path option, and I was tempted to take it, but I knew it was longer, long enough for me to keep on my bearing and keep eating spiders and as it turned out getting a mild scourging from a myriad of scratchy, spiky bits of scrub! Bleeding from my legs in a few spots, shoes socks and shorts covered in grass seeds and struggling to see through the spider webs now criss-crossing my glasses I reach another fence line that should take me straight down to the power lines pretty much inline with the checkpoint, which I then couldn’t find! I hit the track which should have run right passed the checkpoint and continued on, there was a junction which would tell me I’d gone too far and before long I hit it. This time I backtracked about 5 meters in off the trail and stumbled upon another runner punching their card from within a pit surrounded by shallow grass. Checkpoint secured I discovered my nemesis for the day had also located the checkpoint and I headed off for number 8 which was relatively easy to find. Checkpoints 9 and 10 both lay near paths and somewhat over getting shredded by the shrubbery I elected to follow them this time and picked up 9 easily. 10 was however well hidden in some long grass and well off the path and I overshot it and spent a little time backtracking to locate it.

I decided to forgo the paths for checkpoint 11 and crashing through the scrub in as straight a line as I could manage I found it quite easily, but also collected a lot more grass seeds and scratches. It was then an easy, albeit uncomfortable run back to the finish to a time of 57:44, it wasn’t until an exchange of text messages with the Cyborg later that evening that I had beaten him by six minutes once again.

Results - Orange 2 - 3.5km

The Cap’n 57.44

The Cyborg 63.31

Junior (Orange 1 - 4.9km) 56.23