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Tuesday, 7 April 2009

South Islanders go Training

What do a group of South Islanders do when they've got nothing to do one weekend in Autumn? We took a break from assignments, study and work to prepare for Nationals with a serious weekend of o training. Thanks to the organization of Greta, 8 of us descended on Naseby late Friday night. Saturday started with a line course and then some control picking through some controls we found difficult back at Oceanias, I found the line course a great way to get back into some technical navigation but was left feeling a little slow from having to read the map all the time so.... After lunch we headed out around a sprint course. I think a few of us planned to really race this but I know I abandoned all the concentration I had from the morning exercise and quickly lost track of scale. We made the most of the day in Naseby by heading out for some extreme night orienteering in the forest. A good exercise in distance judgement and simplification. And surprisingly the fastest I had managed to run all day!

Sunday was a quick map memory exercise in the morning. It seemed to be more useful than everyone was expecting. Really forcing you to simplify the map and have a good plan. Greta and I followed this up with some verbalisation. A great way to expose just how often my plan goes something like "I'll run this way and then, well, hopefully I'll see the control...." Not that useful in Naseby, or anywhere else.

All in all a great weekend in orienteering paradise! (by Georgia Whitla)

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