Find It Checkpoint Challenge - Xmas edition

 Last night, I organised and hosted a Find It Checkpoint Challenge (a Metrogaine by another name) as part of the GTR December Social Calendar of activities. GTR (Garden Route Trail Running) has coordinated a bunch of 'events' to keep the community vibe going over the festive period.

I had great fun adding onto my custom street map of George, that I first started drawing for the event I hosted in May for World Orienteering Day - the one that went from old South African Post Office postbox-to-postbox.

I then headed out on my bicycle bicycle last week to ride the streets looking for interesting elements to set as clues for the event. 

The response on Facebook was great - I was expecting 45-55 entries of solos, pairs or groups (3s). Looks like there were 46 maps out there and around 100 participants. The start/finish was at the Trail Kiosk at Ground Zero, which is such a great meeting point for runners and cyclists - and events. They've also got a great menu, good food and a super vibe.

My dear friends Tania and Paul and their daughter Sarah are in town for the holidays so they were there. And then Nicholas and Stephanie, with their young son, were staying with family out Plett side and they came through to run the event - which they won (plus pushing their young son in a baby jogger!). Really nice to see them here. (Paul and Sarah were 2nd and Tania in 3rd).

Nic and Stephanie's route

I'm looking forward to offering some navigation coaching sessions next year to get locals sorted with the fundamentals. With the Big 5 O (five-day orienteering event) in this area at the end of December 2023, it would be great to bring more local support. 

I don't have specific plans for other Checkpoint Challenge events, but I'll probably organise another for World Orienteering Day in May 2023.

Find It Checkpoint Challenge - Postboxes

 Shortly after moving to George, I spotted an old postbox. Then I spotted another. I then started keeping an eye open for them. I've now seen and plotted 19 old postboxes around town (and one in Port Alfred when I visited family over Easter).

I fondly remember the days of penpals and writing to friends. Receiving a letter in the post was something special because the letter would be from someone who meant something to you. I went to boarding school for my first two years of high school - we did a lot of letter writing to friends and family and also between the boys and girls high.

When I started seeing the postboxes, I was reminded of this rhyme that we would write on the back of envelopes:

Postie, Postie

run like hell

to give this letter

to my pal.

Postboxes. Running.

The link is clear - a totally fabulous theme for a metrogaine / orienteering event. I've sat on this great idea for almost a year. The Find It Checkpoint Challenge is happening.

They're old, faded and forlorn. But they're still standing.

Two incidents led to the rapid creation of an open event. First, World Orienteering Day, which is now one-week long and no longer just one day, was coming up from 11-17 May. There are now two WODs each year in May and Sept. I've generally been organising one event each year for the past few years. Last year September, I planned an event on trails. I've been thinking about the postboxes for May but I've been too tied up with work to put in the planning.

Two weeks ago at parkrun, a lady whose barcode I'd just scanned said something to me like, "You look like Lisa" to which I replied, "I am Lisa". She moved to George four months ago. She said that she had participated in a number of my Metrogaine events in Jo'burg and followed this up with, "Are you organising any here yet?". Well, I'm a soft target and that was the nudge I needed to make this happen.

After the weekend slipped past, full of activities, it was do or die time on Monday night to draw the map. I had it done by 03h30. Tuesday night I put in the controls and tweaked elements and layout of the map. Wednesday night I exported map sections for the checkpoint cards and printed and laminated. Thursday evening I put out the checkpoints. 

With this event, participants download and print a map in advance of showing up at the start location - a supermarket parking lot. The friendly cafe* there has allowed me to put the first checkpoint location card and event info and map in their window.

At each checkpoint postbox, they'll find a checkpoint card. It shows the location of the next checkpoint. I also added in the actual running distance to the next checkpoint. At CP 11, the two course distances split. The long 12km course goes on to bag a few more postboxes while the short 8km course goes to the final checkpoint and then the finish.

The route isn't really navigationally challenging with direction change and interesting elements because the focus is on visiting postboxes within a reasonable course distance. But, without street names and being an unfamiliar activity, it is sure to keep participants entertained and stimulated. For sure, most participants will never have run around with a map in their hands.

This is the map. Participants fill in CP locations as they progress around the course.

Just this week it was announced that Big 5 O, a five-day South African orienteering event, will be hosted in the Plett / Garden Route region at the end of 2023. I am so there! 

If there is one thing that I miss from my old Jo'burg life, it is orienteering (and my orienteering friends). I'll look at hosting some navigation courses this side to drum up local support and get my eye into it again. I'm already so looking forward to five days of orienteering. 

For now, I'm serving up a bit of urban navigation running fun. I do this mostly because I so love drawing maps and planning courses, but also because I get such a kick out of other people thoroughly enjoying a new activity.

* The friendly cafe I mentioned above... This is where I saw the announcement just over a year ago for the City Nature Challenge - on their window. That event introduced me to iNaturalist, which stimulated my observation and new passion for fungi. Since then I have logged 565 observation and identified 218 species. I told them today what the effect of putting a small poster in their window has had on my life.

Running my own Metrogaine event

I had an absolute treat on Wednesday night - an opportunity to be a participant in my own Metrogaine event. It was hosted from Fred Richardson's Mindful Runner store in Emmarentia.

A few months ago, Christie Courtnage, a young and experienced orienteer, asked if she and Timothy Chambers (another orienteer) could organise the annual April Metrogaine, especially as I've moved from Jo'burg so logistics are a bit more challenging. I immediately agreed.

Christie is based in Jo'burg; Tim is studying in Cape Town, so he assisted with clues during his varsity holidays. What a superb event they planned! Spot-on control placement and excellent clues.

They also had some excellent 'carrots' - high point-score controls and an excellent points distribution that you really had to think about. Very many options out there.

Wednesday was a cold and wet night - the coldest we've had in many, many months. My teammate wasn't keen to run in the rain (I don't blame her!) so I headed out on my own. I wasn't sure going into it how well I'd be running, considering that I had 50km in my legs from the day before.

I felt like a champ! The cooler temperatures really make a difference. I even ran the hills! Initially I was a bit too hot with my shell on, but after 90 minutes when the rain was coming down more, I then started to really feel the chill.

This is what my route looked like:

 Although my route had good flow, I did make a few mistakes.

Early on, I should have gone to #22 before #23. Plenty close enough.

I went 33, 34, 66, 37, 35... I could have gone 33, 34, 35. My map was folded over and I hadn't quite seen 35. My plan wasn't to go back past 35 but to possibly head to 46. As it happened, I was short on time and so hitting 35 as I did actually worked out fine.

I should have zapped the controls at the top of the map and left the ones on the side of #66.
That said, not knowing how my legs were going to feel, I didn't want to run too far away and then have to get over the hill to get back. I decided from the beginning not to go up there even though the points score would have definitely been far more favourable.

Metrogaine really is a super fun event. There's a definite thrill in running around the suburbs at night, claiming them for our own recreation and enjoyment. Night is, for me, a magical time of day. I also took great delight in seeing headlamps of other runners criss-crossing roads and saying hi to them when we passed each other.

We've got some other maps and routes and results on our Metrogaine Facebook page. The Strava fly-by is a really cool one to check out as you can watch the tags moving as the people run around.

My thanks to Christie and Tim for their excellent planning, to Denise for handling the admin and entries, to Brian for his event support; to Fred for opening his store doors to us, for the local Buck & Hog for letting us use their loos and supplying post-run colddrinks. We also enjoyed some samples of flavoured coconut water from Denise's connection. A special thank you too to Vix - I stayed over with her. An excellent team for a most wonderful evening. Thank you.

Open Metrogaine in the Sandton CBD for October

Months ago I attended the launch of the EcoMobility World Festival and even though I rarely travel into Sandton, I was captivated by the initiative. Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that streets in the Sandton CBD will be closed to vehicles for the month of October - with a ring road that is open to buses and taxis.

Before even walking out of the launch function I knew I'd be creating an open Metrogaine.

It's time to play in the streets again. Streets that are for people, not vehicles.
The area is smaller (800m²) than usual and there is no points allocation (checkpoints are equal). There are 23 checkpoints and you can locate them in any order.
There are two course options:

1. How many checkpoints can you get in 30 minutes?
2. How long does it take you to get all checkpoints?

Try it on foot, bicycle, electric bike, segway, skateboard... anything counts.
And post your time, route and mode of transport on the Metrogaine Facebook page. How about a selfie too? 

Download the map and cluesheet, print 'em and enjoy. 

I'd appreciate if you can share this Metrogaine with friends, especially those working in Sandton or living nearby. This makes for a delightful lunch-hour activity. 

DOWNLOAD 

• Metrogaine Sandton CBD map (PDF, 118kb) 
• Metrogaine Sandton CBD cluesheet (PDF, 372kb)   

My thanks to Liz for walking the streets of Sandton with me to look for fun locations.

Ecomobility road closures in October

I'm cooking up a mini-Metrogaine for the month of October in the Sandton CBD for the Ecomobility World Festival, which I wrote about back in March this year.

For the whole month ('transport month' in SA) a number of streets in the Sandton CBD will be closed to traffic - open only to "pedestrians and cyclists as well as tuk tuks or similar vehicles powered by clean energy (biogas or electricity). These streets will be used for activities, including street festivals, an outdoor exhibition of ecomobile vehicles, a test track for such vehicles, road safety activities, walks, runs and possibly an outdoor gym." (from a post on the Tourism Update website from 9 April 2015)

I've searched around but haven't been able to find an actual map of the CBD and which roads will be closed; but I did find a description on the Tourism Update website (mentioned above). So, I made a quick map.

According to the descriptions given, this is what the CBD will look like in October:

Red shows the roads proposed to be closed to cars. No mention made of Maude Street.

Green shows the temporary loop for public transport vehicles where "All vehicle accesses to buildings on these roads will be able to be used".

There's a plan for the green loop to become a permanent public transport loop "where one lane on the kerb side will be dedicated for public and the sidewalks will be expanded to accommodate more pedestrians by June 2016". Cycle lanes will be introduced to the CBD by October 2015.

A post in the Business Day (early August 2015) says that 27km of cycle lanes will connect Rosebank and Sandton. "The routes connect Rosebank to Sandton, Melrose Arch, Saxonwold, the Zoo, Parkview, Parkhurst and Victory Park." Construction will start in June 2016.

[UPDATE] Found it! Finally.
A map on the 'Transport Management Plan' page.

For more on the Ecomobility World Festival, check out their website - www.ecomobilityfestival.org

Here are some video documentaries from the Ecomobility World Festival held in Suwon City, South Korea in 2013.

I've cancelled the June Metrogaine

For the past few years I've always had a Metrogaine in June, on or near the Winter solstice. This year there's just too much on the go that I'm involved in and so I made the call to cancel it.

Here's a bunch of stuff to keep you warm and active in June.

Who said winter was for hibernating??? 

I am planning an open (do anytime you want on foot or bike) Metrogaine for the Sandton CBD for October. This is transport month and we're hosting the Ecomobility World Festival. If you haven't yet heard, Sandton CBD will be closed to private vehicles (yes, pedestrian and cyclist friendly environment) for the whole month! Depending, I may coordinate a night-something in later October, after my annual FEAT event on Thurs, 8 October 2015.

More GOOD NEWS is that here are a bunch of fun navigation options to keep in mind this month.


Sunday, 7 June 2015: The first Bush orienteering event of the season at Phambile, a super highveld terrain venue in the Muldersdrift area. There are five or six courses to cater to all ages (children too) and abilities. Don't be deceived by the seemingly 'short' distances... Navigating in this bush terrain takes longer than a 5km on road...  >>> event info <<< 

Tuesday, 16 June 2015: The first Mountain Bike Orienteering (MTBO) event at Protea Ridge. Also fabulous highveld terrain on the Krugersdorp side of town. Three course distances. The best fun you can have on a mountain bike. >>> event info <<<

Saturday, 27 June 2015: AR Club's annual Dead of Winter Emmies to N1 Run. Yip, run the length of the Braamfontein Spruit from Emmarentia to Sunninghill. This is a social run and total distance is around 18km. You can hop-on, hop-off the route where ever you want. We started this a few years ago aiming to catch the beauty and invigoration of a highveld winter morning. Every year we've had warm and sunny conditions... It should be fresh out there this year. start is only at 07h30. >>> event info <<<

Sunday, 28 June 2015: AR Club is hosting the second Bush orienteering event of the season at Hennops. Note that this is a new date (moved one week later because of other activities happening at the property on our original date). The event sheet will be out soon and you can find it on the orienteering event calendar. 

If you haven't got a clue what to do at these events, no worry. Just rock up and there are friendly people around at the events to give you a hand. Definitely start with an easier course for your first time and only then try more challenging courses. I'll be at most (or all) of these.

Metrogaine is on Facebook. Please Like and share.

Metrogaine Jo'burg on Wed 8 April 2015

With two weeks to go, event and entry info for MetrogaineJo'burg on Wednesday, 8 April 2015 is up.

  

We're starting from Fred's Mindful Runner store in Emmarentia (1 Olifants Rd).

As usual…

PAIRS at R140/pair

PRE-ENTRY only (please, please, please)

60min or 90 min course options

And before another person how asks me how far it is…

You've got a limited time (60mins or 90mins).

What you do in this time doesn't matter to me. Walk, run, crawl, sit-under-a-tree, go for coffee nearby. All that I'm concerned about is that you're back before your course cut-off. You can do what you want - whether 1km or 18km - just don't be late.

As it is school holidays, bring your children. Start 'em young.

I hope to see you there.

Metrogaine review

Although people post online and email really lovely comments about their experiences at Metrogaine, it is not often that I receive a full-on write up. Feige contacted me a few weeks before Metrogaine. Her background is primarily road running and she regularly participates in events and writes about them (much like I do). I was delighted to give her an entry to give this event a try - something quite different to what she is used to.

Feige has written one of the nicest reports I've seen. She has beautifully described how the event works and she has conveyed her experience clearly. I'm also charmed to see how she picks up on the little elements of Metrogaine, like the yummy cupcakes that are homebaked by my orienteering friends, Denise and Christie. With the wind howling and rain descending, Feige missed out on the tea-light candles lining the finish chute - they wouldn't stay lit. I'm sure she would have appreciated these too.

When I first started Metrogaine I used to bake and ice the cupcakes myself. After making over 200 for an event (with my visiting friend Ray from CT coerced into mixing and icing too), I changed to the custom message fortune cookies to manage the numbers. It became challenging to order the correct amount with people entering so late... And then I outsourced the cupcakes to Denise and Christie. They make great cupcakes and they're here to stay.

Metrogaine is designed to be fun and low-key and friendly and convenient and efficient week-night, nav-running fun. And from Feige's report it looks like I'm hitting the nail on its head. Thank you Feige.

You can read her report on her blog - "Living the treaty life".

Running around in the dark - with purpose

Metrogaine Jo'burg played out really well last night and we got super lucky with the weather.

My one friend, who lives in the event area, emailed this morning to say:

"The hard rain did eventually arrive – between 23h30 and 04h00 we had 35mm of rain – our biggest this summer and this morning at 07h00 the river was still uncrossable at the Bryanston bridge; the drift would have been under water."

I'm a bit communication'd out, but you'll find my write-up in this Metrogaine newsletter - it talks about a few of the gremlins on the course (like about the people who changed the gate to their property over the weekend!).  The most up-to-date results are linked to from the Metrogaine page on www.AR.co.za.

In the Metrogaine Bryanston album on the Metrogaine FB page there are some photos and also maps with the routes run by a number of the pairs.

The next Metrogaine events will only be in April and June 2015.

Between now and then...

There's AR Club's Summer Series this next Wednesday and the next... and there will be a few more in Jan/Feb next year.

And I'm really looking forward to the annual, novelty xmas O event on Sun, 7 December. Gonna be good.

There's definitely no shortage of fun and games.

Metrogaine, novelty O, nav coaching and cultivating young orienteers

Tomorrow night is the last Metrogaine event for the year. This is by far the most difficult course planning that I've undertaken. The area is challenging with the road closures (restricts the flow of the course and makes sections unusable) and using a Scatter-ScoreO format (as opposed to the rogaining format Metrogaine is based on).

This meant a smaller area and a lot of juggling of control placements to get specified minimum distances on the courses. It's fun to have my course planning powers completely and utterly stretched and exercised. Tomorrow night the proof, of course, will be in the eating of the pudding that is Metrogaine when the participants set out to spend 90-minutes on my map.

On Sun 7 December I'm looking forward to the annual Xmas orienteering event. It's always a novelty-style event and this year it is at that paintball place off the N1. Entry fee is a gift (labelled men, women, child) to the value of R40. You hand it in at registration and during prize giving you receive one. It's good fun.

I'm also excited about doing some navigation coaching on the 6th with bunch of sporty, adventure racing women (and I think one guy). I always enjoy coaching sessions and I think this group will be a hoot.

I'm in the process of setting up a new Orienteering Schools League (OSL) for schools in eastern Jo'burg. On Monday I'm coaching a teacher's workshop. I did one in October (in our northern OSL area) and the teachers were superb and enthusiastic. The response for the workshop hasn't been great - but the timing is not ideal for everyone with year-end, exams and marking. Three geography teachers are confirmed and I look forward to exploring opportunities to align orienteering with map-related syllabus components - for practical map reading experience that will make maps 'real' and fun.

Two weekends ago I had the pleasure of putting two children through one of my orienteering cone grid games -  a six-year old boy and a nine-year old girl. I've never done cone grids with a child as young as 6. He nailed map orientation within a few minutes of being shown what to do and he got addicted, trying grid course after grid course. This weekend I'll try them on a 4x5 grid... and maybe a 7x7 grid too. Yes, they're totally being cultivated.

(Download the grid cards and instructions for Counting Coloured Cones and give it a try too.)

Maps, maps, maps... there's navigation opportunities everywhere!

Metrogaine planning

I enjoy the challenge of planning Metrogaine events - looking at control placement, points allocation...

In planning courses, I wonder how to really challenge my fastest and most experienced Metrogainers (they run 17-20km in 90-minutes) as well as providing options for newcomers and walkers.

There's an orienteering format that is taking Australia by storm. It's called ScatterO. Here there are a set number of controls out there - say 25 (this is what I'm using). 'Courses' specify how many controls participants MUST collect. There may or may not be a time limit and there may or may not be a points allocation to each control.

My Metrogaine will have both a time limit (90-minutes) plus a score allocation. It's a rogaining-scatter-score event style.

The fastest pair with the highest score wins.

What I like about this format is that I can create a number of different courses to cater for walkers and speedy and experienced running navigators. And every team has a decent amount of time to play.

The BIG challenge for me is in the control placements. As I'm specifying how many of the available controls the participants must get, I need to make sure that they're within an accessible distance.

For fun, I took the map from the last Metrogaine (June), which started from the Cliffview Primary school. I randomly removed controls to leave only 25. Then I tried two routes; one of them aiming for the shortest distance between controls. It came out at around 17 kilometres. Now that's way too far for a minimum distance! I'm aiming at around 12km for the shortest distance on the longest course.

Here are two courses that I drew. Note that the points allocation etc is as it was for the past Metrogaine. My points considerations will be different for this new format.

The Cliffview event was a good one in that there were many controls that the fastest competitors did not get (that's my goal in course planning). I always include a couple of carrots that I doubt the runners will get; they're in there to catch their attention.

What I learned from playing around with this map for a ScatterO format is that I need to close down my event area - not as large.

A good strategy for competitors is probably to first identify those controls that they are unlikely to be able to get... and then to reassess their options at halfway (45-mins).

I'm still in the process of drawing the map. Over the weekend I'll start planning control placements - and of course next week I need to check for road closures, which seriously affect what I can do in reality out there.

Without doubt this will be my most challenging Metrogaine course to plan.

Entries are open - on orienteeringonline (for registered orienteers) and EntryTickets (for everyone else).

All info for this Metrogaine event is on www.AR.co.za.

A good week

I have had an absolutely blazing week.

OK, so I haven't been able to run (still resting knee after really bad whack this past Saturday) so I've turned my energies to a bunch of projects that I've needed to get on to for more weeks than I care to mention.

It's always easy to deal with tasks that can be done relatively quickly. Those that I know will take hours and hours - and ideally uninterrupted hours... I put them off.

With an open week, I made good use of blocks of unbroken hours to made some headway.

On Monday afternoon I did some 'cleansing'. The problem I have with organising events is the packing away. I'll pack some stuff away and then I 'dump' other bits. On the floor. Any available space. Crates, maps, droppers, boards, flags... Between this and that I put them away. It can take a few days to get clarity again. On Monday I wrapped up the results from Metrogaine, sent them out and cleared away the bundle of clue sheets and other stuff lying around.

Cleansing is contagious so with that done I got into some cupboards... and other crates... and piles of paper.

A big project on Tuesday was to set up a Facebook page for our AR Gaiters. We receive lovely emails and sometimes photos from people around the World who are using our AR Gaiters, especially the AR Desert Gaiters. But the AR Gaiter page on www.AR.co.za isn't really the best place to store the photos and stories. Facebook, on the other hand, is a fabulous platform.

So, I set up the page, updated the content on AR for the AR Mini, Desert and Adventure Gaiters and had everything up on Wednesday morning.

That afternoon (and finished it at night) I wrote up a media release for K-Way on trail runner Lucky Miya. He's in France to run in the Skyrunning World Champs on Sunday. I met Lucky earlier this year when he came through to some of our AR Club Summer Series events at Delta. He also took part in the April Metrogaine with orienteer Michael Crone, who is currently in Italy for the World Orienteering Champs. They won the Metrogaine and I really hope that they both have superb runs in their respective international events.

Having had such fun with the AR Gaiter Facebook page, I decided to create a Facebook page for my Metrogaine events. Again, Facebook has its merits and it is a great platform to share event info, photos and runner routes. It's content that is Likeable, Shareable and social.

And then on Thursday I jumped into website modifications on the FEAT website. I wanted to tweak images, backgrounds, colours and some structural elements. It isn't rocket science but it just takes time. Inevitably when you change one colour you need to change a dozen others to make it all look nice - like when you buy a new duvet cover and end up repainting your room and putting up new curtains.

There's one piece of code that I just haven't been able to find. I've been through almost every .php page and every .css page to look for it. I spent two hours yesterday chasing this one issue... I bet it is in the two or three .php pages that I haven't searched!

There are a few other tweaks that I want to make... but it is fine for now.

I've done well to get these big chunks done between regular smaller tasks.

I like new. I like change. It has been a satisfying week.

Metrogaine Jo'burg: mid-winter edition (Wed, 18 June)

We're on!

All event info on www.AR.co.za/metrogaine-joburg/ and online entries through www.entrytickets.co.za.

Hot chocolate afterwards ;)

Street running at Metrogaine Jo'burg

I get such a kick out of organising the Metrogaine Jo'burg events because there are so many great aspects to it.

Looking for interesting control sites can be a challenge in some neighbourhoods. Luckily the Parktown / Rosebank area and surrounds have houses with interesting gates, walls and sidewalk gardens.

I also enjoy turning these features into clues with funny (ha ha) answers (or funny clues with funny answers). I probably start with about 80-90 control locations and then I cull them as I see the checkpoint distribution taking shape and where I want to guide (or lure!) the runners to. I only have space on the clue sheet for 55 clues and I'm limited in points allocation - only 10 controls per points allocations (20s, 30s etc). I think this was one of my better points distributions. While planning I saved my working file to show you the points distributions with colour.

And then there's the map-drawing part. It really is good (time-consuming) fun to create maps. I think that this was my finest map, with its doodle illustration - thanks to a great suggestion from Robyn to include a doodle.

A new addition to Metrogaine are crowns for the winners of the 90-minute and 60-minute courses. It looks like these are going to be much-coveted items. I'm not big on prize givings so the crowns also serve to differentiate the course winners from the rest of the participants.

Lucky Miya and Michael Crone (90-min winners) and Sarah Pope (60-min winner; Sarah’s teammate Magi Lingnau had already left when this photo was taken!). Metrogaine, where a bit of silliness is very welcome. *grin*

The weather was a bit wonky in the late afternoon with an odd drizzle. Thank goodness it cleared up beautifully but still some pairs didn't show. Nonetheless 76 very enthusiastic and eager pairs did participate. They looked fabulously bright in their colourful clothing, reflective bibs and headlamps.

I had help from a wonderful bunch of friends - they really made the evening smooth and efficient. And they're great company too.

There's a write-up with links to results on the AR Club website about the event.

Next one looks to be 18 June - on my birthday. Will confirm details as soon as I know.

Metrogaine Jo'burg at Zoo Lake (Mon, 14 April)

Metrogaine Jo'burg time again! This one is in celebration of www.ar.co.za's 13th birthday!

Full info on how Metrogaine works on www.ar.co.za/metrogaine-joburg/

I hope to see you there

[Early bird entries at R110/pair close at 18h00 on Tuesday - 8 April. DEADEST DEADLINE for late entries at R140/pair is Sunday (13 April) evening at 18h00. I've got goodies to order so early entries really help me to gauge numbers.]

A taste of my own Metrogaine medicine

The WITSOC bunch (Stephanie, Christie, Sarah P and Sarah) really planned a superb Festive Metrogaine on Saturday. As they did all the work and planning, it was a wonderful opportunity for me to participate.

The route linked orienteering maps of Zoo Lake (start/finish) with Emmarentia (and JHB Botanical Gardens) with a good load of controls all over the place. The map covered a really big area, which gave a lot of options. But, as Emmarentia (the park) was loaded with high scoring controls, if you wanted to really score well, it was pretty much compulsory to head over there.

I'd decided not to head over to Emmies, choosing instead to visit a bunch of controls on the Zoo Lake side of Barry Hertzog. Not a good choice in terms of being very high scoring, but a nice route to run. I guess it doesn't help kinda knowing the suburbs... I didn't feel like running up Westcliff and nor did I want to run up and over to Emmies and then up and over on the way back. Yip... lazy ass ;)

The street part of the map. Big area and lots of controls. Points work according to the control number where 10-19 would be 10 pts each, 20-29 are 20pts each etc.

Looking at the points, if I'd run more directly from Zoo Lake and into Emmies to pick up a couple of controls there and then straight back, I'd probably have collected more points. I think my total was 530 points - not bad in the overall ranking but pretty dismal compared to Timothy Chambers' 1200 (a bit more maybe) points.

My route. A few in-and-outs.

I made two errors on the route. Leaving Zoo Lake I thought that the road I exited on was one lower than where I actually was. This meant that when I got to the corner where my first control should have been on (I'd run one block up - looking at the map I'm not sure what I was thinking...), the house number in the clue didn't match. Fortunately I could see a few blocks up so I realised that I was too high up and had to drop down a block (I was actually on the correct road initially but didn't realise it because I only started looking for the house when I got to the next corner).

On the home stretch back to Zoo Lake I mis-counted the blocks. I'd counted 'two blocks up' on my map and so that's what I did. But it was actually three blocks up (need new contact lenses?)... Again, the clues didn't match what I found in reality so after another look at my map I realised what a paw-paw I was and corrected.

Zoo Lake controls.

And this is what I missed out on in Emmies. Look at all those 50 and 60 point controls!

I ran about 13km in total. Nice 'n easy.

Metrogaine is a super event format and I enjoyed running around, map in hand. Well done to Stephanie, Christie, Sarah P and Sarah for planning this excellent event.