Aus Orienteering Champs Day 2

Sunday, 30 September 2018

Today was the Australian Relay Champs - held on a map similar to the previous day's but with a few more hills and heaps more deep erosion gullies.  In fact by the time I finished my first leg I was covered in dirt and exhausted from scrambling up and down out all of them.   I had a pretty good first half but lost a bit of time on the 2nd half and finished 2nd overall, 2 minutes behind the leader. Luckily I had two other excellent team mates - Sue and Clare, so ultimately we romped it in, winning by almost 40 minutes as the other teams didn't have quite the depth we did.

Jett had an outstanding 2nd leg run, and brought his team up from 6th place to just 7 seconds behind 1st place. Unfortunately they faded a bit on the 3rd leg and finished 4th, but it was a good confidence builder for Jett which was great. 

Zali had the rare experience of being a 3rd leg runner who finished ahead of their own 2nd leg runner.  This is because she ended up in the mass start (which is where the organisers send off all the lingering last leg runners at the same time so they don't have to wait endlessly for their missing team mates).  She had a solid run and came in about 20 minutes before her 2nd leg runner finally did (it turned out she had been lost for over an hour so she certainly demonstrated some impressive grit and determination to keep going!).   

Jon had a good run as a last leg runner and brought his team up to 2nd spot.

After a hot day out in the dust and heat it was great to head back to Renmark, buy an icecream, then turn the brown waters of the Murray even browner with the dust from our bodies..

Passably clean, we went to watch some of the opening ceremonies of the Schools Championships. Tasmania looked very smart in their new tracksuits..

Back in Berri we had a BBQ on the waterfront which was lovely.  Tomorrow is the Australian Sprint Distance Championship around a school campus in Renmark - I'm looking forward to it being nice and flat!