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Tuesday, 3 November 2009

Seven kinds of Prickly

Orienteering at Labour Weekend this year was held down in the deep South...and although some of those pansy North Islanders (Mark Lawson excluded!) decided it was too far to come down and had their own crappy OY's in cutty grass filled sand dunes... the 3 awesome events went off without a hitch.

Saturday Afternoon, Otago University/Polytechnic. Fast, Intense urban sprint. Carsten blasted around the course to win the M21E grade, only to be beaten unofficially by the mapper (yours truly....) by 3 seconds. 4th Place getter from JWOC 2008, Anna Forsberg from Sweden took out the women's grade.

After a feast of a few slices of pizza on Saturday night it was off down to Gabriels Gully in the small town of Lawrence. Carsten had finished this map just in time for this event, and the map didnt disappoint. It was a really cool little area except for the massive ammounts of green shit. There was just about every type of green prickly stuff you could think of excluding matagouri, cutty grass and Spaniards. I ran first and got very frustrated blazing a trail through the sticky prickly bush and ended up at the head of the pack a few seconds in front of Matt Scott. Mark Lawson was just a few seconds behind that. Anna again took out the womens grade just ahead of Lara Prince. It was the kind of map that Chris Forne would just eat for breakfast! Very frustrating but very fun...especially when you win!

The end of the good weather came on Monday at Cuttance Block, opposite the airport in Dunedin. The map has recently had an extension and the addition has just made this awesome map ten times better. Carsten was dominant in the wet and steep conditions, with Matt finishing close behind. Anna completed a clean sweep of the weekend beating everyone on course two including the M20 winner by 20 seconds.

Overall an excellent weekend of Orienteering down in the South. Would have been better had there been a good number of elites turn up but obviously it was bad timing with exams for most of the juniors falling in and around the same time of the year....but such is life!

Map

Results

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