WA Aus Champs - Part 1

Wednesday, 4 October 2023

It's Wednesday today (I think) and we're halfway through our trip to WA for the Australian Orienteering Champs. The competitions are actually being held all over the place, with a couple of events in Perth, then others up to 2 hours driving in various easterly directions.  When I finally decided to go I thought I might be doing all the driving for myself and Zali, so I've booked a range of accommodation aimed at minimising the driving time - while a lot of other people have just settled in one spot for the whole week.   As it turns out I can share the driving as our friend Ali is with us too.

After arriving in the afternoon of  what seemed like an endless day (that started at 4.30am), we drove out to a town called Northam which was close to the first couple of events.  The accomodation was  in the car park out the back of a grand old hotel by the river. It was ok.  I don't need to spend any more time in Northam though, as after doing the top 5 things in the trip adviser guides, we ran out of ideas.  I'm sure we would have loved it more if we were into ballooning or doing the Avon paddling classic, two things the area is famous for.

my door was the red one on the left

views from the lookout over town 

The orienteering areas were fantastic though - it's always nice to be able to just run unencumbered by bracken and bushes pulling at your legs. It was very bouldery openish terrain and I had a really good run in the Aus Middle Champs, making only one 45sec mistake and managing to win by 30 seconds after pushing myself pretty hard to keep going as fast as I could. That was very satisfying and I'm not sure I'll repeat that glory again this week!  Zali unfortunately mispunched and Jett made a few mistakes but Jon also had a good run and won his class.

The next day was the relays and while I didn't run anywhere nearly as cleanly as the day before, our team finished in a good 4th place.  Jett definitely didn't have his best run and his team just missed out on third, while Jon's team lead most of the day before faltering to third place in the end. The stand out was Zali's W20E team which was third despite Zali never doing any training and one of her team mates being a bit injured.  

After the relays we drove back to Perth city to our accommodation for the next 3 nights which is in a cbd hotel which has been a change of pace! Perth city seems pretty nice and of course Kings park is just sensational up on the hill nearby. On the rest day Ali and I went for an early morning run up there and the flowers were amazing:

We spent the rest of the day actually resting and checking out the nearby shops and doing some admin work.