The Campus Night O

Last night we had a fun point-score orienteering event at The Campus. The event was put on by Karen Chambers, in an attempt to keep our Orienteering Schools League children participating. We don't get many to weekend events so this one was well timed (week night) to catch them. We did have some schools league children; but a bigger attendance from the general orienteering community who are often game for anything O.

As a point score event, we had 45 minutes to locate as many controls as possible. A really nice twist, included by junior orienteer Timothy Chambers (my speedy relay partner at our training camp over Easter) were the bonus controls. Attached to five of the marked controls were pieces of map that indicated the location of a bonus control. You have to match the location on the piece of map with your map, remember the location and plan to get it along the way. Although I visited all of the controls, I missed seeing the tags for two of the five bonuses. Doh!

The one bonus tag was on about my third control - but it was located much later on my planned route. I remembered the area of its location but had forgotten the exact placement, thinking it was next to a tree on the 'island'. I had to run back, check the tag again (fortunately I remembered on which control the map was attached!) and then go for the bonus. It turned out that this detour wasn't really such a bad thing because I'd missed seeing a control on the map down that way, which I had to go back to get anyway.

I completed all controls - minus the two bonuses - in 36 minutes. The challenge of the bonuses is that I had no way of knowing to which controls the 'indicator' maps were attached. So I headed to the finish after I'd cleaned up all the controls marked.

Green circles show locations of the bonuses. B shows the control on which the indicator map was attached and which bonus it indicated. I found out where the other two were afterwards. The back and forths are mostly to get bonuses. I ran mostly clockwise. From the start I headed North first, getting away from the crowds who mostly ran immediately for the very close controls. My total distance was around 4.5km.

This was superb fun! There's likely to be another next term.