For the first time since the very early days of our trip, we awoke to the sound of rain on the roof.  We’ve been incredibly lucky with the good weather generally, so suffering through a day of rain wasn’t going to be the end of the earth.  Clare, Paul and I had early starts, so we were out at the event first. The arena setup looked really good again, set in the pine forest with great vantage points of the finish chute and a fantastic atmosphere.

The terrain was incredibly cool - fast open running around soft (but not sandy) dunes, then into horrible thick stuff with low visibility.  It was the thicker stuff that turned out to be my undoing, as I was having trouble with my vision anyway - with water all over the outside of my glasses and the fog on the inside of my glasses completely obscurring my view of both the map and the terrain - it was particularly bad in the thicker areas and I made mistakes that forced me to relocate off nearby tracks.  It was shortly after that point that I was caught up by some runners on my course who had started a bit behind me (thus were ranked higher), so I decided that in light of my vision problems, my best bet was to try and stick with them - so I spent the next 5 or 6 controls running along behind them, keeping a vague idea of where we were. This worked well until they disappeared from view for a moment in another section of thicker vegetation and suddenly they were gone. Luckily I was still with a Swiss runner (Jeanette) I’d caught up to at about the 2nd control who had also lost the pack, so we were running together as we did the last few controls - my vision was so bad by the end I almost missed a compulsory taped road crossing (I couldn’t see it on the map OR in the terrain!) but by then we had silently established a rapport, so, breaking silent-mode, she said ‘hey! over here!’ as she ducked through it, which saved me from further lost time!  The combination of early and late mistakes but with some fast running in the middle section meant that I finished a respectable 9th.  Clare didn’t have the luxury of a pack to run with and also made a few of her own mistakes, so she finished in 8th, 2 seconds ahead of me.  

The highlight of this day was the giant ice creams we got from the local fruit and veggie store. At $4.50 they were a NZ bargain!

In other news, I had a good run and finished 8th, securing myself a seeded bib (10) for the A-final on Saturday, and also achieving my overall goal of qualifying for both the sprint and long finals - YAYYY!!!!  The other cool news is that Jon, Andy,  Clare, Paul and pretty much everyone else we know have also qualified for A finals and Harald and Linda were both 1st in their qualifying, putting them as the hot seeds for the final.   Woohoo!  

We finished the day with a nice BBQ on our lovely deck, watching the sun go down over the sea. 

Rangitoto Island photo from the brochures

Our excellent hosts and tour guides Kim and Helen came up with the idea for us to spend the morning on the relatively newly created Rangitoto Island (it emerged from the sea after a volcanic eruption 600 years ago) before heading up to Murawai for the model event today.  Luckily Kim was alert to the fact that it would be a popular day for the ferry to the island, so he headed into the city early to queue for us all so we could get on the boat (it’s a bit dumb, but having a ticket for the 20 minute ferry trip doesn’t actually guarantee you a spot on the ferry). 

It was a beautiful day for a trip on the harbour - there were heaps of sailing boats and great views in all directions.  We disembarked at Rangitota and headed up to the highest point on the island - a 2.4km hike. The path went past barren lava fields and through relatively newly wooded forests as it wound its way up to the volcanic crater where the views were pretty cool.  

On the way up we checked out some Lava Caves and crawled through them, emerging through a shaft some 50 metres away. It was super fun.

We still had to get to the model event for the long races so we had to scoot back down the hill to catch the 12:45 ferry back to the mainland.  It turned out that this walk (of 5 or so kms) was six year old Jack's new record for hiking - which was a pretty good effort as half of it was uphill !  He had no trouble with it at all (nor did Ava, who spent a lot of time walking and nattering with Zali).

Tonight and for the next 3 nights we’re staying in a rented house in Murawai - it has a lovely deck and views out to sea.  After checking out the area which will be similar to where we are running tomorrow we had dinner with Clare, Andy and Paul, then drove around to Harald and Linda's to teach them how to play bananagrams.  As it's a similar game to scrabble it's hard to play it if you aren't English, so we eventually settled on a system whereupon they could use either Norwegian or English words, and each of our racks had to include two Norwegian words.That certainly evened up the competition - we had to stop playing before we got beaten!

Today was the first day of competition for us in the World Masters Games. This is the first ‘World’ orienteering event I’ve done since the World Junior Championships in 1990.  Of course in 1990 you had to be part of the Australian team to compete, whereas anyone can enter the Masters Games. Orienteering usually has the largest or second largest number of participants at World Masters Games - it’s strange to be in a majority for a change!  The total number of Masters Games participants here in Auckland is around 26,000, which includes 1,750 orienteers from 40 countries.  Sweden has sent the biggest contingent of orienteers with 352. Australia has 205.

Anyway - today was the sprint qualification. The idea is to finish in the top half (top 20 or so) your heat, so that you go through to the A final tomorrow. Those who don’t get relegated to the B final. The good news is that Jon and I (and almost all our friends) qualified, the bad news is that Paul had a good run, but unfortunately missed a control just like I did at Rotorua so he was disqualified - ouch.  Clare had a good run to be 3rd in my class and would have to be considered in with a chance for a medal tomorrow (as are both Linda and Harald). I was 5th and happy with my run but realistically I’m not in the same class as the top 3 or 4 - I’m just happy I qualified as now that my class is filled with Swedes and Finns I was a bit concerned I wouldn’t make it though. so yay! The area was really detailed and tricky - there were no easy routes so the slower runners - better navigators were on a slightly more even footing than they normally on in Sprint.

While we were at the event the kids were hanging with the cousins and got to go with Helen and Kim to explore the tunnels at North Head Battery. They also participated in a NZ activity called Grass-Sledding whereupon you sit on a piece of cardboard and slide down long grass, losing your cardboard early on and tumbling down the rest of the hill. Surprisingly they survived this and we met them after the event at Takapuna Beach for some frisbee throwing and dog walking.  

Another awesome NZ day.

You can probably see where I”m going with this :)  Everything was fine for the first 90 minutes - I was starting to get pretty tired so we stopped for a break.  

Once we were home and recovered we headed back down to the lake for a lovely BBQ dinner with everyone who has been staying here. It’s been a fantastic week and it will be sad to leave. Luckily there’s heaps more of this trip to look forward to.