NZ - Day 8 - STB Day 1

Friday, 31 January 2020

We're back in the orienteering groove again with the first two events of the Sprint the Bay done and dusted. I'm pleased to say that no-one mispunched today which is great.

We had a mass start for each age class in the morning. Jett and Riley ran hard in a tightly packed bunch for the entire race with Riley finishing 5th - only 7 seconds down in a large and fast field. Jett was just another 13 seconds back.  Julie and Zali also had good runs but were a little further off the pace.  Jon finished 2nd and I was first.

There's a little video of the morning event here 

The mass start for the junior boys and girls class.

I've moved down to W40 for this event as the W50 courses looked too short, but the competition isn't quite as strong at this event and I had two pretty easy wins today.  The upside is that I am now running the same course as Jon and the girls, so I can compare times and splits to them.  

It was a hot day today. So in between races we went to Splash Planet which is a big water park. 

Aside from the slides it also had lots of shady spots as well as mini golf, bumper cars and other fun things. It was a nice afternoon!  

The afternoon race had normal starts and it was quite a tough sprint race with a fair bit of rough and hilly farmland to get through as well as a school campus.  Jon got a good win, Riley made a few small mistakes while Jett was more consistent and wasn't far off the leaders.  Julia and Zali both ran well but both lost some time on various controls.

It was even hotter by the time we finished so they were handing out icypoles to all the finishers.

As usual we didn't get home until quite late and weren't eating dinner until 9pm!  Tomorrow is likely to be the same as our second race doesn't start until after 6pm.