Running wild at The Wilds (O)

Yesterday was the final event of the orienteering Urban Series at The Wilds in Houghton. We decided to group a bunch of the short-distance events together to create this series and it seems to have worked quite well to bring in some newcomers.

I think I've only just got my quota (five of the nine) of events to get listed in the rankings... we'll see when the log comes out.

This The Wilds event was a nice local and accessible one - probably about 15mins from home for me. I haven't been to The Wilds for at least two years so, while I know the general layout of the place, I don't know the area very well. The one thing I do remember from my very first run there is how challenging it can be to read the paths on the map. Many little paths that are difficult to read while running.

The navigation was very straight forward with nothing tricky. In some places there was an option or two but generally quite obvious. The one place where I did pause to consider options was from Control 18 to 19. The only reason I chose to take the path was because I didn't want to risk getting any more blackjacks (grass seeds) in my tights. Hahaha. I heard afterwards that this was a good option; the route was clear initially but then there were blackjacks on the approach to the control.

This weekend coming we've got the Gauteng Orienteering Champs - three-days of orienteering. On Saturday afternoon is the sprint event at the Woodlands Office Park. This is going to be purely fast running and quick thinking on easy running terrain.

What I'm really looking forward to are the Middle (Sun) and Long (Monday) courses - especially the Long. The nav should be quite technical and challenging - just want I'm craving. Being in the Centurion area the terrain should be typical grassy and rocky highveld.

I should have some nice 'don't-do-what-I-did' routes to show you afterwards. hahaha