Melbourne Sprint Weekend

Saturday, 14 March 2020

Last weekend we went to Victoria to attend the Melbourne Sprint Weekend -  Similar to NZ it was an event with 6 sprint races all around Melbourne packed into 3 days.  

We attended this event 2 years ago, but this time Clare came along and we took Niko - a buddy of Jett's -  so there were 6 of us staying at our friend Susannah's house in Glen Iris.

Unlike NZ where I won all the events reasonably comfortably, with Clare to compete against it was more fun and nail bitingly close the whole way.  In all but one race there was less than a minute between us - and normally it was just one (dumb) route-choice or mistake which separated us at the end. I won the first two races and came 2nd in everything else while Clare won the last 3 and had a couple of 3rds - giving us a dead head for the series points-wise but victory to Clare as she had more wins (although I had the overall fastest time).

Unfortunately for Clare she had to leave for the airport before the presentations, leaving me to pick up her prize hamper. Given that we were equal on points I decided that the fairest thing to do was to actually split the prize evenly...

So she got this: (mmm sultanas..)

and I got this:

As for the rest of them - both Jon and Zali performed very respectably in their elite categories, and Jett and his friend Niko battled it out in the senior boys competition - neither of them quite managed a win but they were both close at times. Last year I think everyone but me managed to mispunch on at least one event - this year we did much better and all of us got through cleanly.  Funnily enough one of my dumbest mistakes this time was panicking that I'd punched a wrong control (the 2nd last) and spending 30 seconds half running back to it to check before I decided not to bother and continued on to the finish. That 30 seconds was enough to cost me the race I'd been leading up until that point. 

Being a McComb holiday we also squeezed a few other activities in. Between the first and 2nd race on day 1 we all went Ice Skating..

and although no-one was dressed appropriately for it, we managed not to break any wrists or legs which was a relief. 

Straight after the 2nd race on day 2 we sprinted to the car, drove to the train station, caught a train to the MCG where we watched the final of the T20 World Cup with 80000 other people which would have been awesome enough but it was followed by a short Katy Perry concert which made it even awesomer.  It was a great night and cost us all of $55 for 5 of us which was pretty amazing.  We didn't get home until midnight but it was worth it.

We flew back on Tuesday morning and dropped Niko straight off at school. Jett would have gone too but by then he had picked up Zali's cold by the so got a few days off.  Zali happened to have the day off anyway so things turned out well for her.

Now that the Easter 3-day Orienteering event has been cancelled I'm even more glad that we went to Melbourne before everything got shut down - we were really lucky to get to have such a fun weekend before everything got serious.