'The Competitiveness of Orienteering' in Do It Now

It's always great to get orienteering articles into magazines; orienteering is even less mainstream than adventure racing despite it being a HUGE sport way up North in the Scandinavian countries.

This one has just come out in the February 2013 issue of Do It Now magazine. They've done a great layout on this one. Jan Kocbach's photograph looks fabulous. My thanks to Elri Flamengo (Editorial Director) for saying "Yes!" to orienteering and for giving this feature article a comfy three pages.

End of 31-day Challenge

A month ago my mom proposed a 31-day Challenge to get back into the swing of walking regularly. She's planning to do a section of the Camino in France in September. I decided to join her.

Looking back at my log I did fairly well.

Over the past 31 days:

• I logged 190km
• On two days I had double running sessions; that's how it happened.
• I missed seven days of foot-based activity whether running/walking/hiking (without missing these I could have logged around 240km for the month!)
• On two of those missed days I was so frikkin' stiff from Fred's Westcliff Stairs Challenge that I wasn't even walking so lekker, much less able to run. On one missed day I drove to Dullstroom for Highland Tracks and on another I was at AR Club doing run licenses and memberships. The other three days were not activity free as I was at circus class (one day was an MTB + circus day).

Although running is my primary discipline, I usually aim for five or six runs a week plus other activities like circus. It's a good balance. I had a really good, steady and consistent December so I'm feeling really good. 

My mom did really well. At the start of the Challenge I made her a month planner to tick off her days completed - she doesn't keep a training log. I started off with stickers that I had on hand and then I went and bought prettier, fancier ones. 

She was really consistent but missed a few days. There was the weekend of lots of rain and then the past few days the wheels fell off her routine as she has had to deal with such kuk on a project that she's managing (in short, a consultant hasn't done what he was meant to and they're into testing phase). She's getting back into the swing on things and already her walking has improved.

Nice challenge.

Waterfalls, kloofs and maps at Highland Tracks

I haven't been to a weekend adventure race for ages! This past weekend I went to Team Lickety Split's event, Highland Tracks, as a control collector. This means that I got to go out hiking and playing while pickingup the signs at the checkpoints after all the teams have passed through the leg.

The race was held in the Dullstroom area and the organisers really discovered some amazing sites (and sights) that they incorporated into their race route. I only went out in the area used for the second hike (of three) and it was absolutely stunning!

On Saturday Mark Human (ARer and in this case the race doctor) and I went out to look for teams, find some checkpoints and to stretch our legs. We didn't find many teams but we did get some nice photographs. On Sunday morning I whizzed through a section to collect a bunch of controls - teams had only cleared the area late Saturday afternoon.

I was SUPER impressed with their maps, especially the Ama Poort Poort Hiking Map that Sue worked up. I've written a piece about this on www.AR.co.za. The post looks at what I appreciate in race maps and how Sue really got it right (see pics with captions below too).

Here are a couple of other photos that I took on the route.

Mark in one of the pretty little kloofs.

Alec Avierinos went out there as a solo, testing his Neverest system.

With Mark at one of the beautiful waterfalls.

Yay! Another checkpoint located.

I can't resist little yellow flowers!

Flying! Mark making like Jeb Corliss. Here we were on top of a big waterfall and the wind was howling on the edge - updrafts from the waterfall.

Flowers. Waterfall. Pretty.

It's incredible how many kloofs are in this area!

While control collecting on Sunday I found these hay bales. Beautiful scent. Reminds me of my childhood where I spent many a school holiday riding horses, hanging in stables and jumping off hay bales on a family friend's farm in Zimbabwe.

These two did really, really well. Two novices racing together. The didn't complete the last hike but nonetheless they can be really proud of their first race.

Pic from Mark. All colour coordinated with my custom pink O gaiters.

Pic from Mark. This is what the checkpoint markers look like.

A superb race map. Neat, pre-plotted checkpoints. Printed on waterproof paper. Customised so that only the map section needed was printed on the A3 page. Shading shows the area of the Ama Poort Poort Hiking Map.

I totally love what Sue did here. She enlarged this area from the 1:50,000 topographical map, added in the trails, trouts dams, some vegetation features and the farm's numbered 'tourist spots'. There is no way that these relatively close-together control locations could be distinguished on a 1:50,000 map so Sue did just the right thing to create this map. I believe that the farmer's original 'hiking map' was really bad. She has given this map to the property owner to use for his guests. 

Well done to William, Sue and your team for presenting this lovely race.

Fred's Westcliff Stairs Challenge

So Fred put out a January Extreme Challenge to our Adventure Racing Club members: 10 reps of Westcliff Stairs. Sarah and I did the Challenge this morning. We got lucky with the weather - cool with light drizzle. That the stairs got a little slippy certainly reigned us in on the down, which was good.

We took it easy from the beginning knowing that the stairs would kick. There are LOTS of them. Our first split was probably slower than all but my final split.

To keep count of our reps, we put 10 stones at the bottom, moving one over with each rep completed.

The first six reps were A-ok. You definitely feel it a lot more from the 7th. The 9th was probably my worst and on the way down I nicked a finger on a join in the railing. I'd taken to dragging my hand long the railing on the way down - brushing off the rain. I skinned a bit of a finger - ow! Nonetheless, I seemed to feel better on the up on the final rep.

Sarah finished just ahead of me with 56:25; I clocked 57:50.

Fred did say we could crawl if we needed to... Sarah gives it a try on the way up. Turns out we didn't need to. But if there's been a few more reps...

I give crawling a try - downhill!

Sarah - done! (OK, so I asked her to look tired - she didn't really - see below)

10 reps and Sarah is still lookin' like she can take down more.

Me.

Lisa & Sarah

What a super Challenge! We're already looking forward to Fred's February as-yet-undisclosed Challenge.