Aus Orienteering Champs - Day 6

Tuesday, 9 October 2018

 Jon had bravely entered the M21 Elite course for the Australian Long Distance Championships, but unfortunately he stepped in a hole at absolute furthest point of his course and immediately tore his calf muscle.  With no way of walking anywhere he started crawling towards the nearest track.  After 30 metres he realised it wasn't going to work so he searched for a suitable crutch.  Luckily there was a suitable gnarly gandalf stick nearby, so he hauled himself upright and limped pathetically (I'm guessing), up to the track.  Along the way he met another competitor and asked them to pass on a message to the organisers when they reached the spectator control. In the meantime he continued his hobbling towards a small cleared area that was marked on the map. Once he got there he still had a long wait before being picked up but he has since admitted that it was pretty much the first time he'd had to himself all week so he quite enjoyed it.    Eventually an organiser and first aid person came out in a car and picked him up. I'm sure Jon pleaded for them to take him to the nearest airport for some more peace and quiet but they returned him to the event arena and gave him some good first aid treatment and sympathy before releasing him back into the custody of the Schools Team.

The rest of us had respectable runs.  Zali was 7th, Jett was halfway down his field in 12th, and I was 2nd by a few minutes. I would certainly have been 3rd to Clare if she hadn't had a bit of a blowout on the 4th control, losing 20 minutes and then sight in her left eye when she scratched it on a branch. She also topped off her bad run by falling into a prickle bush and getting a butt full of splinters.

The area was quite steep with some delightful little patches of native forest and runnable pine forest, but with an awful lot of horrible cleared forest and young pine plantations in between, which necessitated a lot of fire trail running which many people found a bit tedious.   

The other eventful thing which happened (aside from Jon's calf and Clare's prickle butt) was the wedding.  When the organisers were setting up the arena the previous day they encountered a wedding party making final plans for the next day's ceremony.  Apparently it took a while to convince the wedding people that it wasn't a joke and that there were really going to be 1000 extra guests (not one of which would be wearing appropriate attire) at their wedding ceremony. Luckily it took place after most of the orienteers had been to the control which was just 10 metres from the ceremony site, so I don't think their day was totally ruined. I snuck a picture from a distance..that's the bride on the far right.

So all up it was an eventful day!