Australian Orienteering Champs - Armidale

Friday, 25 October 2024

It's been a long time since the whole family has travelled to the Australian Orienteering Championships together. Since 2017 Jon has been involved as a coach for the Tasmanian Schools Team, and either Zali or Jett (and for a while both) were on the team so they would travel and stay separately while I made my own plans with one or none of the children.

It's nice to be back together again.

Some years (like last year in WA)  the week of the championships involves 2 or even 3 moves around a state to follow the events, where as this year we could stay in just one location, which unfortunately for us was in the Armidale Holiday Park.  I mean it was fine, but 9 nights was about 6 too many nights to stay in a place where you had to visit reception to get a single roll of toilet paper every few days and where the cabin was so stark  we only had 1 bedside table and no coffee table.  During the week I still had to work which meant sitting at the dining table which was uncomfortably furnished with outdoor chairs.   

The orienteering itself was fantastic. Armidale has lots of areas with relatively open bush forests with huge boulders everywhere (which was my undoing a number of times).  Jett had some good runs and even sat on the leader's chair for a while on one of the days, while as per usual Zali did really well for someone who does no training, and Jon and I had a mixed bag or results. I finally got a win at the sprint event on the last day which was nice.

The rest of the time we toured the local area and saw lots of big canyons and waterfalls.

And while it was a bit boring having to work during the week I was able to get out really early for some lovely runs about 20  minutes drive away:

All up it was a fun week. Great to catch up with lots of people and nice to be away.