Orienteers at the Frontrunner Off Road Running series

This series set up by Al Cory-Wright, has been happening for several years now. As it is pure off road running the events have typically been dominated by Orienteers. There is 3 events in the series, The first is a race up and down Mt Vernon - A brutal single track up a valley that gets steeper and steeper the closer you get to the top followed by a steep flat out decent that gets steeper and steeper the closer you get to the bottom. I find this one the toughest, there is no let up. The next from Taylors Mistake out to Godley head and back - Fast and flat, small hill at the Godley Head then flat along the top with a steep decent into Taylors Mistake. The final race is in Sumner - Flat hard run to end of the beach then up a steep hill, long hill up followed by a long down hill and a flat long straight at the end. Its no coincidence that Carsten and Marty Lukes have battled it out in the previous years. But this year it was time for some others to take over...

Carsten did himself some damage selling off his rocks on trademe and rendered his back too sore to compete in the series this time....All three events were won by a Temporary visitor from England, Mark Tucket. Tane Cambridge had to play second fiddle to Tucket and ended up a close second in the first two races and third place in the remaining race to take out second overall for the series. Lara Prince was out paced by a very quick triathlete who did very well and would have placed in the top ten in the mens grade. Lara ended up second overall in the women's grade. Tim Farrant screwed the system and managed to compete in the junior grade, completing a clean sweep of all the events to win probably his last Junior event...he even got all the competitors in his grade up for a photo (only thing is he didn't have any one with a camera to take a photo....). Junior Alistair Richardson was also second in the series to another Papo Orienteer Ryan Batin who completed a clean sweep of the under 16 grade. Ryan's Sister Rebecca also came second in the under 16 girls grade.

Full Results

An attempt at writing something Interesting about TONIC 09...

Its over a week since TONIC...thought maybe some of the North Islanders would be keen to write something up about it...but its exam time and Jamie apparently has a lot less free time these days...so here is a brief attempt by me to give a run down of the weekend.

Friday night, myself, Matt and Lara took the afternoon off work and flew up to Auckland to arrive in time to the Mini-multi-sprint event. Three intense short races in quick succession. First race was trickier than it looked and you were forced to orienteer straight from the word go. No easing our way into it, just blam, control, control control, finish. Next race was Mt Albert itself. Steep, short and a big(?) scale...which caught a few out. The third was probably a more traditional type of sprint race, lots of buildings fast running and quick decisions with a little longer to sort yourself out. Darren dominated winning by 20 seconds over three races, I was second and local boy Gene Beveridge showing out in 3rd place. The women's grade was cleaned up by three speedy juniors, Angela Simpson, Laura Robertson and Kate Morrison in that order.

Then after buying some over priced Albany apples it was off to Woodhill for day two. Middle distance race with no tracks on the map...not sure what the planner was up to here but it wasnt too hard to switch of the tracks in my mind as well as the map. Jamie showed that he still had it in him and finished in second (Smithson was unofficial due to doing the 1st 3 controls of course two before starting...) Darren dominated again and James Bradshaw jumped into the mix. Lara Prince with lots of orienteering under her belt in the previous few weeks showed the North Islanders how to navigate in their there own forest. Lizzie Ingham was second and Rebecca Smith third.

The evening was preceded by a meal at a Muriwai Golf course with some rather stressed and under prepared kitchen staff running around pulling their hair out...what was there tasted good anyway... Then the big race the Halloween special night event. I believe Duncan Morrison was victorious beating Greg Flynn who decided half way through to start taking it seriously...Batman had all the light in the world but lots of trouble seeing through his mask...

Finally the weekend was wrapped up with the Long Distance race in and around the infamous Maze area at Woodhill. A varied course with some interesting sand dune features and some mysterious areas was once again dominated by Darren, Second was James with Myself making up the "best of the rest" in third. The W21E grade was just a complete reverse of the top three from the day before!

Some nice orienteering in a nice area...think I'm starting to get a hang of these sand dunes....or else I'm just beginning to get like everyone in Auckland and Im starting to get to know the area quite well....Stand out performer in the weekend was Gene Beveridge, keeping the current crop of elites on their toes!

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