Midweek Training at Wirra Wirra

Adrian asked if we could set courses some time this year for mid-week training. After our last disastrous effort we were a bit reticent, but said yes.

We thought that it might be good to have some training in the rocks and forest with fairly poor visibility at Wirra Wirra, so asked if we could do it there. Adrian organised the map and sent it through to us.

Trevor took the bull by the horns and sat down and “armchaired” (using purple pen) in mid May with the thought to make a course which could be shortened to cater for those who are getting less capable physically, but still want a hard challenge. We were also keen to use the SI timing that has been used for the school training as it is easy to use and gives split times to compare.

We went out to do an initial visit to the area and check whether the planned courses were OK in June. This involved visiting each planned site and making a few changes to control sites where the position was not easy to interpret from the nearby features. (mostly changes to rock locations, or ambiguous control descriptions).

We were pretty happy to see that it could be tricky making our way through on a bearing and that choice of attack point and careful use of bearings and distance was vital for some of the controls to avoid wasting time. This would give plenty of scope for training on different skills.

In late July we went out again to tape our control locations, and to pick up the key to the gate from forestry headquarters. Adrian had organised the key for access at our request. We walked around the controls together and agreed on the final locations, hanging tape at each to confirm it. Trevor had found out how to use open orienteering mapper (OOM) from David George, so that he could load the courses over the map and see this all on his phone screen. This enabled us to check that we were, indeed, where we thought we were.

We had asked for people to pre-enter if possible due to COVID need to not share maps and to pre-pay to avoid handling of cash. For most this worked, and others phoned us to let us know that they were coming. This meant that we could print enough maps (we just printed a few more than we knew were coming at Officeworks the day before)

On the morning of the event it was very chilly.

We arrived just before 9am after putting out signs at the corner. The grass was still icy. We split up, taking half of the controls each, and went to put them out (using mini training flags and the schools kit which we had borrowed from Aylwin Lim).

It was very reassuring to find the tapes still in place to confirm the locations. By the time we were back at the car there were already two customers waiting and only about fifteen minutes to spare. The frost was starting to melt away and the sun was shining even though the wind was still chilly.

Everyone who arrived and went out on a course came back. This is always an excellent result.

The pines were flowering and the pollen was all over the place.!! We all came back from the forest with yellow powder on our shoes.

We were glad that the courses were found not too easy and many met a challenge or two along the way. A few tips were exchanged, and route choices were a hot topic for discussion. Hopefully the training will be useful in our development. For the course setters it was also a learning curve as we looked carefully at the rock areas and discussed in depth what the different markings on the map were actually representing.

It was excellent to see Rachael and Peter, who usually work on weekends, so find it hard to get to events.

It was also really great to see the Milners back (Jill and Chris) with us.

Welcome too to Nigel and Leila who are “practicing for retirement”. Nigel was too fast to catch with a photo.

To be with our special orienteering friends again is always a treat for us.

Thanks to everyone who came out, gave encouragement to the setter

and made the work worth it. Twenty-four people was a great turn out.

Thanks to David, who has put the course up on to route gadget so that we can all upload courses and learn from the choices that others made. I encourage you to do this and to get in the habit of reviewing your run and self critiquing. Make notes on your map. Where did you go? What did you do well? What did you try that didn’t work? Why didn’t it work? What have you learnt for next time? Is there anything that you could do to improve your orienteering?

This is a training event, so results don’t matter, but results were:

Long Course

Clive Arthur 50:15

Marian Arthur 63:58

Peter Ashforth 45:24

Nigel Dobson 41:32

Robin English 50:18

David George 32:51

Leila Henderson 62:16

Peter Kreminski 65:56

Doug McMurray 76:01

Ruth Nicolson 83:10